The Humanitarian With The Guillotine
Isabel Paterson
September 1955
Reprinted from The God of the Machine, by Isabel Paterson, published in 1946, now out of print.
Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends. This is demonstrably true; nor could it occur otherwise. The percentage of positively malignant, vicious, or depraved persons is necessarily small, for no species could survive if its members were habitually and consciously bent upon injuring one another. Destruction is so easy that even a minority of persistently evil intent could shortly exterminate the unsuspecting majority of well-disposed persons. Murder, theft, rapine, and destruction are easily within the power of every individual at any time. If it is presumed that they are restrained only by fear or force, what is it they fear, or who would turn the force against them if all men were of like mind? Certainly if the harm done by willful criminals were to be computed, the number of murders, the extent of damage and loss, would be found negligible in the sum total of death and devastation wrought upon human beings by their kind. Therefore it is obvious that in periods when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object. When they are not the immediate executants, they are on record as giving approval, elaborating justifications, or else cloaking facts with silence, and discountenancing discussion.
Obviously this could not occur without cause or reason. And it must be understood, in the above passage, that by good people we mean good people, persons who would not of their own conscious intent act to hurt their fellow men, nor procure such acts, either wantonly or for a personal benefit to themselves. Good people wish well to their fellow men, and wish to guide their own actions accordingly. Further, we do not here imply any "transvaluation of values," confusing good and evil, or suggesting that good produces evil, or that there is no difference between good and evil, or between good and ill-disposed persons; nor is it suggested that the virtues of good people are not really virtues.
Then there must be a very grave error in the means by which they seek to attain their ends. There must even be an error in their primary axioms, to permit them to continue using such means. Something is terribly wrong in the procedure, somewhere. What is it?
Certainly the slaughter committed from time to time by barbarians invading settled regions, or the capricious cruelties of avowed tyrants, would not add up to one-tenth the horrors perpetrated by rulers with good intentions.
As the story has come down to us, the ancient Egyptians were enslaved by Pharaoh through a benevolent scheme of "ever normal granaries." Provision was made against famine; and then the people were forced to barter property and liberty for such reserves which had previously been taken from their own production. The inhuman hardness of the ancient Spar-tans was practiced for a civic ideal of virtue.
The early Christians were persecuted for reasons of state, the collective welfare; and they resisted for the right of personality, each because he had a soul of his own. Those killed by Nero for sport were few compared to those put to death by later emperors for strictly "moral" reasons. Gilles de Retz, who murdered children to gratify a beastly perversion, killed no more than fifty or sixty in all. Cromwell ordered the massacre of thirty thousand people at once, including infants in arms, in the name of righteousness. Even the brutalities of Peter the Great had the pretext of a design to benefit his subjects.
The present war, begun with a perjured treaty made by two powerful nations (Russia and Germany), that they might crush their smaller neighbors with impunity, the treaty being broken by a surprise attack on the fellow conspirator, would have been impossible without the internal political power which in both cases was seized on the excuse of doing good to the nation. The lies, the violence, the wholesale killings, were practiced first on the people of both nations by their own respective governments. It may be said, and it may be true, that in both cases the wielders of power are vicious hypocrites; that their conscious objective was evil from the beginning; none the less, they could not have come by the power at all except with the consent and assistance of good people. The Communist regime in Russia gained control by promising the peasants land, in terms the promisers knew to be a lie as understood. Having gained power, the Communists took from the peasants the land they already owned; and exterminated those who resisted. This was done by plan and intention; and the lie was praised as "social engineering," by socialist admirers in America. If that is engineering, then the sale of fake mining stock is engineering. The whole population of Russia was put under duress and terror; thousands were murdered without trial; millions were worked to death and starved to death in captivity. Likewise the whole population of Germany was put under duress and terror, by the same means. With the war, Russians in German prison camps, Germans in Russian prison camps, are enduring no worse and no other fate than that their compatriots in as great numbers have endured and are enduring from their own governments in their own countries. If there is any slight difference, they suffer rather less from the vengeance of avowed enemies than from the proclaimed benevolence of their compatriots. The conquered nations of Europe, underthe Russian or German heel, are merely experiencing what Russians and Germans have been through for years, under their own national regimes.
Further, the principal political figures now wielding power in Europe, including those who have sold their countries to the invader, are socialists, ex-socialists, or communists; men whose creed was the collective good.
With all this demonstrated to the hilt, we have the peculiar spectacle of the man who condemned millions of his own people to starvation, admired by philanthropists whose declared aim is to see to it that everyone in the world has a quart of milk. A graduate professional charity worker has flown half around the world to seek an interview with this master of his trade, and to write rhapsodies on being granted such a privilege. To keep themselves in office, for the professed purpose of doing good, similar idealists welcome the political support of grafters, convicted pimps, and professional thugs. This affinity of these types invariably reveals itself, when the occasion arises. But what is the occasion?
Why did the humanitarian philosophy of eighteenth century Europe usher in the Reign of Terror? It did not happen by chance; it followed from the original premise, objective and means pro posed. The objective is to do good to others as a primary justification of existence; the means is the power of the collective; and the premise is that "good" is collective.
The root of the matter is ethical, philosophical, and religious, involving the relation of man to the universe, of man's creative faculty to his Creator. The fatal divergence occurs in failing to recognize the norm of human life. Obviously there is a great deal of pain and distress incidental to existence. Poverty, illness, and accident are possibilities which may be reduced to a minimum, but cannot be altogether eliminated from the hazards mankind must encounter. But these are not desirable conditions, to be brought about or perpetuated. Naturally children have parents, while most adults are in fair health most of their lives, and are engaged in useful activity which brings them a livelihood. That is the norm and the natural order. Ills are marginal. They can be alleviated from the marginal surplus of production; otherwise nothing at all could be done. Therefore it cannot be supposed that the producer exists only for the sake of the non-producer, the well for the sake of the ill, the competent for the sake of the incompetent; nor any person merely for the sake of another. (The logical procedure, if it is held that any person exists only for the sake of another, was carried out in semi-barbarous societies, when the widow or followers of a dead man were buried alive in his grave.)
The great religions, which are also great intellectual systems, have always recognized the conditions of the natural order. They enjoin charity, benevolence, as a moral obligation, to be met out of the producer's surplus. That is, they make it secondary to production, for the inescapable reason that without production there could be nothing to give. Consequently they prescribe the most severe rule, to be embraced only voluntarily, for those who wish to devote their lives wholly to works of charity, from contributions. Always this is regarded as a special vocation, because it could not be a general way of life. Since the almoner must obtain the funds or goods he distributes from the producers, he has no authority to command; he must ask. When he subtracts his own livelihood from such alms, he must take no more than bare subsistence. In proof of his vocation, he must even forego the happiness of family life, if he were to receive the formal religious sanction. Never was he to derive comfort for himself from the misery of others.
The religious orders maintained hospitals, reared orphans, distributed food. Part of such alms was given unconditionally, that there might be no compulsion under the cloak of charity. It is not decent to make a man strip his soul in return for bread. This is the real difference when charity is enjoined in the name of God, and not on humanitarian or philanthropic principles. If the sick were cured, the hungry fed, orphans cared for until they grew up, it was certainly good, and the good cannot be computed in merely physical terms; but such actions were intended to tide the beneficiaries over a period of distress and restore them to the norm if possible. If the distressed could partly help themselves, so much the better. If they could not, that fact was recognized. But most of the religious orders made a concurrent effort to be productive, that they might give of their own surplus, as well as distributing donations. When they performed productive work, such as building, teaching for a reasonable fee, farming, or incidental industries and arts, the results were lasting, not only in the particular products, but in enlargement of knowledge and advanced methods, so that in the long run they raised the norm of welfare. And it should be noted that these enduring results derived from self-improvement.
What can one human being actually do for another? He can give from his own funds and his own time whatever he can spare. But he cannot bestow faculties which nature has denied; nor give away his own subsistence without becoming dependent himself. If he earns what he gives away, he must earn it first. Surely he has a right to domestic life if he can support a wife and children. He must therefore reserve enough for himself and his family to continue production. No one person, though his income be ten million dollars a year, can take care of every case of need in the world. But supposing he has no means of his own, and still imagines that he can make "helping others" at once his primary purpose and the normal way of life, which is the central doctrine of the humanitarian creed, how is he to go about it? Lists have been published of the Neediest Cases, certified by secular charitable foundations which pay their own officers handsomely. The needy have been investigated, but not relieved. Out of donations received, the officials pay themselves first. This is embarrassing even to the rhinoceros hide of the professional philanthropist. But how is the confession to be evaded? If the philanthropist could command the means of the producer, instead of asking for a portion, he could claim credit for production, being in a position to give orders to the producer. Then he can blame the producer for not carrying out orders to produce more.
If the primary objective of the philanthropist, his justification for living, is to help others, his ultimate good requires that others shall be in want. His happiness is the obverse of their misery. If he wishes to help "humanity," the whole of humanity must be in need. The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.
But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people, if unperverted, positively do not want to be "done good" by the humanitarian. When it is said that everyone should live primarily for others, what is the specific course to be pursued? Is each person to do exactly what any other person wants him to do, without limits or reservations? and only what others want him to do? What if various persons make conflicting demands? The scheme is impracticable. Perhaps then he is to do only what is actually "good" for others. But will those others know what is good for them? No, that is ruled out by the same difficulty. Then shall A do what he thinks is good for B, and B do what he thinks is good for A? Or shall A accept only what he thinks is good for B, and vice versa? But that is absurd. Of course what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.
What kind of world does the humanitarian contemplate as affording him full scope? It could only be a world filled with bread-lines and hospitals, in which nobody retained the natural power of a human being to help himself or to resist having things done to him. And that is precisely the world that the humanitarian arranges when he gets his way. When a humanitarian wishes to see to it that everyone has a quart of milk, it is evident that he hasn't got the milk, and cannot produce it himself, or why should he be merely wishing? Further, if he did have a sufficient quantity of milk to bestow a quart on everyone, as long as his proposed beneficiaries can and do produce milk for themselves, they would say no, thank you. Then how is the humanitarian to contrive that he shall have all the milk to distribute, and that everyone else shall be in want of milk?
There is only one way, and that is by the use of the political power in its fullest extension. Hence the humanitarian feels the utmost gratification when he visits or hears of a country in which everyone is restricted to ration cards. Where subsistence is doled out, the desideratum has been achieved, of general want and a superior power to "relieve" it. The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.
The good people give him the power he demands because they have accepted his false premise. The advance of science lent it a specious plausibility, with the increase in production. Since there is enough for everybody, why cannot the "needy" be provided for first, and the question thus disposed of permanently?
At this point it is asked, how are you to define the "needy," and from what source and by what power is provision to be made for them, kind-hearted persons may exclaim indignantly: "This is quibbling; narrow the definition to the very limit, but at the irreducible minimum you cannot deny that a man who is hungry, ill-clad, and without shelter is needy. The source of relief can only be the means of those who are not in such need. The power already exists; if there can be a right to tax people for armies, navies, local police, road-making, or any other imaginable purpose, surely there must be a prior right to tax people for the preservation of life itself."
Very well; take a specific case. In the hard times of the Nineties, a young journalist in Chicago was troubled by the appalling hardships of the unemployed. He tried to believe that any man honestly willing to work could find employment; but to make sure, he investigated a few cases. Here was one, a youth from a farm, where the family maybe got enough to eat but was short of everything else; the farm boy had come to Chicago looking for a job, and would certainly have taken any kind of work, but there was none. Let it be supposed he might have begged his way home; there were others who were half a continent and an ocean from their homes. They couldn't get back, by any possible effort of their own; and there is no quibbling about that. They couldn't. They slept in alleyways, waited for meager rations at soup-kitchens; and suffered bitterly. There is another thing; among these unemployed were some persons, it is impossible to say how many, who were exceptionally enterprising, gifted, or competent; and that is what got them into their immediate plight. They had cut loose from dependence at a peculiarly hazardous time; they had taken a long chance. Extremes met among the unemployed; the extremes of courageous enterprise, of sheer ill-luck and of downright improvidence and incompetence. A blacksmith working near Brooklyn Bridge who gave a penniless wanderer ten cents to pay the bridge toll couldn't know he was making that advance to immortality in the person of a future Poet Laureate of England. But John Masefield was the wanderer. So it is not implied that the needy are necessarily "undeserving." There were also people in the country, in drought or insect-plagued areas, who were in dire want, and must have literally starved if relief had not been sent them. They didn't get much either, and that in haphazard, ragbag sort. But everyone struggled through to an amazing recovery of the whole country.
Incidentally, there would have been much more severe distress instead of simple poverty at the subsistence line, but for neighborly giving which was not called charity. People always give away a good deal, if they have it; it is a human impulse, which the humanitarian plays on for his own purpose. What is wrong with institutionalizing that natural impulse in a political agency?
Very well again; had the farm boy done anything wrong in leaving the farm, where he did have enough to eat, and going to Chicago on the chance of getting a job?
If the answer is yes, then there must be a rightful power which shall prevent him leaving the farm without permission. The feudal power did that. It couldn't prevent people from starving; it merely compelled them to starve right where they were born.
But if the answer is no, the farm boy didn't do wrong, he had a right to take that chance, then exactly what is to be done to make certain he will not be in hard luck when he gets to his chosen destination? Must a job be provided for any person at any place he chooses to go? That is absurd. It can't be done. Is he entitled to relief anyhow, when he gets there, as long as he chooses to stay; or at least to a return ticket home? That is equally absurd. The demand would be unlimited; no abundance of production could meet it.
Then what of the people who were impoverished by drought; could they not be given political relief? But there must be conditions. Are they to receive it just as long as they are in need, while they stay where they are? (They cannot be financed for indefinite travel.) That is just what has been done in recent years; and it kept relief recipients for seven years together in squalid surroundings, wasting time, work, and seed-grain in the desert.
The truth is that if any proposed method of caring for the marginal want and distress incident to human life by establishing a permanent fixed charge upon production would be adopted most gladly by those who now oppose it, if it were practicable. They oppose it because it is impracticable in the nature of things. They are the people who have already devised all the partial expedients possible, in the way of private insurance; and they know exactly what the catch is, because they come up against it when they try to make secure provision for their own dependents.
The insuperable obstacle is that it is absolutely impossible to get anything out of production ahead of maintenance.
If it were a fact that the producers generally, the industrial managers and others, had hearts of chilled steel, and cared nothing whatever about human suffering, still it would be most convenient for them if the question of relief for all kinds of distress, whether unemployment, illness or old age, could be settled once for all, so they need hear no more of it. They are always under attack on this point; and it doubles their trouble whenever industry hits a depression. The politicians can get votes out of distress; the humanitarians land lucrative white collar jobs for themselves distributing relief funds; only the producers, both capitalists and workingmen, have to take the abuse and pay the shot.
The difficulty is best shown in a concrete instance. Suppose a man owning a profitable business in sound condition with a long record of good management wishes to arrange that his family shall have their support from it indefinitely. He might as owner be in a position to give first lien bonds yielding a certain amount; say it was only $5,000 a year on a business which was paying $100,000 a year net profit. That is the very best he could do; and if ever the business failed to produce $5,000 net profit, his family wouldn't get the money, and that's all there is to it. They might put the concern through bankruptcy and take the assets, and the assets after bankruptcy might be worth nothing at all. You can't get anything out of production ahead of maintenance.
Aside from that, of course his family might hypothecate the bonds, hand them over to the "management" of some "benevolent" friend, a thing which has been known to happen, and then they wouldn't get the money anyhow. That is about what occurs with organized charities having endowments. They support a lot of kind friends in cushy jobs.
But what if the business man, through the warmth of his generous affection, fixed it irrevocably so that his wife and family had an open checking account on the company's funds, to draw just what they pleased. He might feel innocently sure they would not take more than a small percentage, for their reasonable needs. But the day might come when the cashier must tell the happy wife there was no money to honor her check; and with such an arrangement it is certain that the day would come rather soon. In either case, just when the family needed money most, the business would yield least.
But the procedure would be completely insane if the business man gave to a third party an irrevocable power to draw as much as he pleased from the company's funds, with only an unenforceable understanding that the third party would support the owner's family. And that is what the proposal to care for the needy by the political means comes to. It gives the power to the politicians to tax without limit; and there is absolutely no way to ensure that the money shall go where it was intended to go. In any case, the business will not stand any such unlimited drain.
Why do kind-hearted persons call in the political power? They cannot deny that the means for relief must come from production. But they say there is enough and to spare. Then they must assume that the producers are not willing to give what is "right." Further they assume that there is a collective right to impose taxes, for any purpose the collective shall determine. They localize that right in "the government," as if it were self-existent, forgetting the American axiom that government itself is not self-existent, but is instituted by men for limited purposes. The taxpayer himself hopes for protection from the army or navy or police; he uses the roads; hence his right to insist on limiting taxation is self-evident. The government has no "rights" in the matter, but only a delegated authority.
But if taxes are to be imposed for relief, who is the judge of what is possible or beneficial? It must be either the producers, the needy, or some third group. To say it shall be all three together is no answer; the verdict must swing upon majority or plurality drawn from one or other group. Are the needy to vote themselves whatever they want? Are the humanitarians, the third group, to vote themselves control of both the producers and the needy? (That is what they have done.) The government is thus supposed to be empowered to give "security" to the needy. It cannot. What it does is to seize the provision made by private persons for their own security, thus depriving everyone of every hope or chance of security. It can do nothing else, if it acts at all. Those who do not understand the nature of the action are like savages who might cut down a tree to get the fruit; they do not think over time and space, as civilized men must think.
We have seen the worst that can happen when there is only private relief and improvised municipal doles of a temporary character. Unorganized private giving is random and sporadic; it has never been able to prevent suffering completely. But neither does it perpetuate the dependence of its beneficiaries. It is the method of capitalism and liberty. It involves extraordinary downswings and upswings, but the upswings were always higher each time, and of longer duration than the downswings. And in the most distressful periods, there was no real famine, no black despair, but a queer kind of angry, active optimism and an unfaltering belief in better times ahead, which the outcome justified. Unofficial, sporadic private donations did actually serve the purpose. It worked, however imperfectly.
On the other hand, what can the political power do? One of the alleged "abuses" of capitalism was the sweatshop. Immigrants came to America, penniless and ignorant of the language and with no skilled trade; they were hired for very low wages, worked long hours in slum surroundings, and were said to be exploited. Yet mysteriously in time they improved their condition; the great majority attained comfort, and some gained wealth. Could the political power have provided lucrative jobs for everyone who wished to come? Of course it could not and cannot. Nevertheless, the good people called in the political power to alleviate the hard lot of these newcomers. What did it do? Its first requirement was that each immigrant should bring with him a certain sum of money. That is to say, it cut off the most needy abroad from their sole hope. Later, when the political power in Europe had reduced life to a gloomy hell, but a large number of persons might still have scraped together the requisite sum for admittance to America, the political power here simply cut down admission to a quota. The more desperate the need, the less chance could the political power allow them. Would not many millions in Europe be glad and grateful if they could have even the poorest chance the old system afforded, instead of convict camps, torture cellars, vile humiliations, and violent death?
The sweatshop employer hadn't much capital. He risked the little he had in hiring people. He was accused of doing them a horrible wrong, and his business cited as revealing the intrinsic brutality of capitalism.
The political official is tolerably well-paid, in a permanent job. Risking nothing himself, he gets his pay for thrusting desperate people back from the borders, as drowning men might be beaten back from the sides of a well-provisioned ship. What else can he do? Nothing. Capitalism did what it could; the political power does what it can. Incidentally, the ship was built and stored by capitalism.
As between the private philanthropist and the private capitalist acting as such, take the case of the truly needy man, who is not incapacitated, and suppose that the philanthropist gives him food and clothes and shelter? When he has used them up, he is just where he was before, except that he may have acquired the habit of dependence. But suppose someone with no benevolent motive whatever, simply wanting work done for his own reasons, should hire the needy man for a wage. The employer has not done a good deed. Yet the condition of the employed man has actually been changed. What is the vital difference between the two actions?
It is that the unphilanthropic employer has brought the man he employed back, into the production line, on the great circuit of energy; whereas the philanthropist can only divert energy in such manner that there can be no return into production, and therefore less likelihood of the object of his benefaction finding employment.
This is the profound, rational reason why human beings shrink from relief, and hate the very word. It is also the reason why those who perform works of charity under a true vocation do their best to keep it marginal, and gladly yield the opportunity to "do good" in favor of any chance for the beneficiary to work on any half-tolerable terms. Those who cannot avoid going on relief feel and exhibit the results in their physical being; they are cut off from the living springs of self-renewing energy, and their vitality sinks.
The result, if they are kept on relief long enough by the determined philanthropists and politicians in concert, has been described by a relief agent. At first, the "clients" applied reluctantly. "In a few months all that changes. We find that the fellow who wanted just enough to tide him over has settled back to living on relief as a matter of course." The relief agent who said that was himself "living on relief as a matter of course"; but he was a long step lower than his client, in that he did not even recognize his own condition. Why was he able to evade the truth? Because he could hide himself behind the philanthropic motive. "We help to prevent starvation, and we see to it that these people have some sort of shelter and bedding." If the agent were asked, do you grow the food, do you build the shelter, or do you give the money out of your own earnings to pay for them, he would not see that that made any difference. He has been taught that it is right to "live for others," for "social aims" and "social gains." As long as he can believe he is doing that, he will not ask himself what he is necessarily doing to those others, nor where the means must come from to support him.
If the full roll of sincere philanthropists were called, from the beginning of time, it would be found that all of them together by their strictly philanthropic activities have never conferred upon humanity one-tenth of the benefit derived from the normally self-interested efforts of Thomas Alva Edison, to say nothing of the greater minds who worked out the scientific principles which Edison applied. Innumerable speculative thinkers, inventors, and organizers, have contributed to the comfort, health, and happiness of their fellow men-because that was not their objective. When Robert Owen tried to run a factory for efficient production, the process incidentally improved some very unpromising characters among his employees, who had been on relief, and were therefore sadly degraded; Owen made money for himself; and while so engaged, it occurred to him that if better wages were paid, production could be increased, having made its own market. That was sensible and true. But then Owen became inspired with a humanitarian ambition, to do good to everybody. He collected a lot of humanitarians, in an experimental colony; they were all so intent upon doing good to others that nobody did a lick of work; the colony dissolved acrimoniously; Owen went broke and died mildly crazy. So the important principle he had glimpsed had to wait a century to be rediscovered.
The philanthropist, the politician, and the pimp are inevitably found in alliance because they have the same motives, they seek the same ends, to exist for, through, and by others. And the good people cannot be exonerated for supporting them. Neither can it be believed that the good people are wholly unaware of what actually happens. But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they ap-prove, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.
Wednesday, September 15, 1999
Monday, September 06, 1999
Taiwan Independence and the Stockholm Syndrome
Taiwan Independence and the Stockholm Syndrome
The Real Reason the Taiwan Independence Elite refuses to be reunited with China.
Bevin Chu
September 06, 1999
Question: What is the real reason the Taiwan independence elite refuses to be reunited with China?
A. Because the Taiwan independence elite are "Native Taiwanese" who were colonized in 1949 by "Han Chinese" the way Australia and New Zealand were colonized by the British.
B. Because although the Taiwan independence elite are themselves Chinese, they are like America's Founding Fathers, and prefer death to colonial oppression.
C. Because the Taiwan independence elite are principled champions of free market capitalism, and reunification would mean they would have to live under socialism.
D. Because the Taiwan independence elite are victim/victimizers in a still unresolved "Stockholm Syndrome" identity crisis with its roots in a half century of humiliating Japanese colonialism.
If you answered A, B, or C, go to the back of the class.
If you answered D, should be writing this article, not me, for you already understand the underlying social psychology of Taiwanese separatism, better even than the Taiwan "independence" leaders themselves.
Let's look at the answers.
A. Because the Taiwan independence elite are "Native Taiwanese" who were colonized in 1949 by "Han Chinese" the way Australia and New Zealand were colonized by the British.
Wrong. Taiwan separatist leaders fraudulently label themselves as "Native Taiwanese." They are not. They are Chinese. Most are from Fujian province a mere 90 miles to the west. A minority are from Guangdong province slightly further south. Taiwanese is not a language, merely a regional dialect of Chinese. It is not even native to Taiwan, but originates in the Minnan ("South of the Min River") region of Fujian. The real "Native Taiwanese" are Aborigines related to New Zealand's Maori, who migrated to Taiwan in prehistoric times, and whom early Chinese settlers drove into the mountains. Taiwan independence is not an aboriginal rights movement and should not be confused with the Hawaiian independence or American Indian movements.
B. Because although the Taiwan independence elite are themselves Chinese, they are like America's Founding Fathers, and prefer death to colonial oppression.
Wrong. The American Revolution was motivated by political idealism. It was a radical republican rejection of a monarch's economic exploitation of a colonial population. ("No taxation without representation.") Americans of British descent who no longer considered themselves British were not ashamed of or rejecting their ethnic and cultural roots, they were inventing a revolutionary new political and economic paradigm which necessitated the severing of political ties with an obsolete form of governance.
Taiwan "independence" on the other hand is not about anything remotely so elevated. Quite the opposite. Far from rejecting colonialism, Taiwan "independence" is about nostalgia for Japanese colonial rule by Chinese collaborators with inferiority complexes who prefer to be something they are not, Japanese, rather than what they are, Chinese. It is about the neurotic need of an "elite" ruling class of Chinese Quislings to deny their ethnic and cultural identity ("We don't want to be Chinese").
To understand the mindset of the Taiwan independence elite, try to imagine Jewish victims of the Shoah as militant Holocaust denyers. Mind-boggling, I know, but truth is often stranger than fiction. Merely one example: on orders from Lee Teng-hui, the ROC Ministry of Education is busily engaged in Orwellian historical revisionism, rewriting K-12 textbooks to echo textbooks in Japan, which whitewash WWII Japanese war crimes while blaming China and other victims of Japanese militarism.
C. Because the Taiwan independence elite are principled champions of free market capitalism, and reunification would mean they would have to live under socialism.
Wrong. When it looked as if communism was gaining the upper hand, Lee joined the Taiwan Communist Party. Lee's Communist Party membership papers have been made public on TV talk shows both here in Taipei and in Beijing. The irony is that if Lee had not been the craven opportunist he is, he would not even be alive today to occupy the office of ROC President. When the political winds abruptly shifted, Lee saved his own miserable hide by ratting out the poor saps he himself recruited, who were executed by firing squad.
The shrilly pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) meanwhile, is exactly what it sounds like, a left wing, populist, democratic socialist party. Its rabid anti-business animus recently forced Germany's Bayer corporation to pull out of Taiwan in disgust after years of fruitless negotiations and millions in squandered preliminary groundwork for a proposed pharmaceutical plant in DPP contolled Taichung. [Update 2005: Over the years since this article was first penned, the liberal and progressive elements in the DPP have either left in disgust or been excommunicated, and the DPP has degenerated into a right-wing fascist party.]
Staunch anti-communist Chiang Kai-shek was responsible for Taiwan's universally acknowledged and justly praised "economic miracle." His economic advisors, implementing the same kind of economic strategies Ludwig Erhard used to breath life back into a West Germany leveled by Allied bombing, transformed an impoverished, exploited Japanese colony into one of the four "Asian Tigers." His son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo was responsible for Taiwan's democratization. The younger Chiang rescinded martial law, legalized opposition political parties, and aggressively promoted Min Nan, Hakka and Aboriginal Taiwanese into positions of authority.
Lee Teng-hui, on the other hand, contrary to what his high-priced Madison Avenue image consultants have bamboozled the western media into believing, contributed nothing to Taiwan's economic and political evolution. Soon after mentor Chiang Ching-kuo's death, Lee betrayed Chiang's tragically misplaced trust by turning Taiwan into a nightmare version of "Asian crony capitalism." Lee Teng-hui is nothing less than Taiwan's answer to Ferdinand Marcos. His wife Tseng Wen-hui's shopping expeditions to Japan are legendary, and put Imelda to shame.
Lee's sole "democratic reform" was to change presidential elections from indirect election by an American style Electoral College to direct election by the general public. Whatever benefits may have accrued from this procedural change have been offset negatively many times over by Lee's shredding of the ROC Constitution, Lee's undermining of Taiwan's still shakey commitment to the Rule of Law, and Lee's flinging the doors of government offices wide open to organized crime. According to Liao Cheng-hao, former Minister of Justice who resigned last year in disgust, thirty percent of Lee Teng-hui's KMT leglislators have triad (mob) connections.
Is Beijing dying to impose communism on either Hongkong, Macao, or Taiwan? Are you kidding? Just ask any diehard Marxists in the west what they think of the current regime in Beijing. They'll sputter with apoplexy that contemptible "Capitalist Roaders" like radical reformer Zhu Rongi have sold socialism down the river. Beijing today doesn't even want socialism for the mainland, let alone for Hongkong, Macao, or Taiwan.
It should be abundantly clear by now that answers A through C are not the real reason the Taiwan independence elite refuse to be reunited with China.
This leaves,
D. Because the Taiwan independence elite are victim/victimizers in a still unresolved "Stockholm Syndrome" identity crisis with its roots in a half century of humiliating Japanese colonialism.
Correct. Go to the head of the class! The Taiwan "independence" movement's real reason for not wanting to be reunited with China has nothing to do with ritual lip service the Taiwan independence elite mechanically pay to freedom, democracy, or capitalism, but rather with something about which they are in massive denial. It is seldom dealt with honestly even here in Taiwan, and never abroad. Taiwan independence is the Taiwan separatist elites' collective struggle with a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome -- a fawning, masochistic Japanophilia. Taiwan independence is the lingering aftereffect of Japan's soul-degrading 50 year colonial occupation.
In 1895 a newly invigorated, militarized Japan attacked a decadent, defenseless Manchu China and extorted from China her offshore province of Taiwan. In a heart-rending scenario straight out of "Sophie's Choice," Taiwan Chinese learned their own government had sacrificed them, albeit at gunpoint. Their feeling of bewilderment and disorientation can only be imagined.
This experience prompted an "elite" clique of Quislings on Taiwan to totally identify with their colonial overlords and to deny their Chinese-ness. Better an ersatz Japanese, they reasoned, than a bona fide Chinese. After all, wasn't it more dignified to be a second class citizen of the invincible Japanese juggernaut, than to be a full-fledged citizen of an enervated China too impotent even to prevent her people from being kidnapped and her territory from being annexed? Everybody loves a champ, nobody loves a chump.
Lee Teng-hui was born into a family permeated with this Quisling mindset, what the Japanese colonial government called a "Guoyu Jiating" or "National Language Family," meaning the family worked for Japan, spoke Japanese, adopted Japanese names, swore allegiance to the Japanese Emperor, and were "politically reliable." Lee himself has publicly repeated numerous times that before age twenty-two he considered himself Japanese.
In a news article entitled "Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's Tears," a Member of Japan's Parliament after interviewing Lee told the Japan Daily Post, "Lee Teng-hui received a Japanese education during Japanese occupation. His older brother was a soldier in the Japanese Imperial Army and died in action. The result is Lee Teng-hui is in his own heart and in his own eyes even more Japanese than the Japanese. His yearning and homesickness for Japan is intense."
During WWII, each time news reached Taiwan that the Japanese Imperial Army had scored another victory against American and Chinese troops in the Pacific Theater, Lee Teng-hui would on his own initiative, without any external coercion, rally classmates at Tamkiang High School to hold pro-Japan victory marches, with himself leading the procession, jubilantly waving a Japanese flag and shouting "Banzai."
While Taiwan independence Quislings like Lee Teng-hui, Peng Ming-min and others lived lives of luxury and privilege in Kyoto and Tokyo by selling out their fellow Chinese on Taiwan, Taiwanese men who refused to actively collaborate were shipped off to the South Pacific as slave labor constructing military bases or as cannon fodder on the front lines. Taiwanese women were abducted and installed in brothels to serve Japanese soldiers as sex slaves, subjected to year after year of gang rape.
In 1987, when Chiang Ching-kuo died, ethnic harmony prevailed on Taiwan. Millions of ordinary citizens, young and old, rich and poor, Minnan, Hakka, Aborigine, and post-1949 arrivals from other provinces all turned out for his funeral procession. People wept openly. The depth of their gratitude was profound. The two Chiangs, authoritarian warts and all, had spared the ROC from Mao's madness and lifted Taiwan's people out of poverty. Taiwanese peasants formerly ground under the heel of Japanese colonial overlords now drove Mercs and Bimmers. Even animosity dating from the bloody 2-28 Incident of 1947, deliberately incited by diehard Japanese right-wingers who remained behind as Fifth Columnists to sabotage Taiwan's retrocession, was a thing of the past. Gradual but eventual German style reunification with a post-Maoist, rapidly liberalizing mainland was only a matter of time.
Alas, it did not take long for Lee Teng-hui, whom Chiang Ching-kuo made the monumental error of entrusting to carry on his reformist legacy, to betray his mentor, not to mention his Constitutional Oath of Office. Unbeknownst to Chiang, reunification was the last thing on Lee's mind. (Actually reunification was on Lee's mind, only with Japan, not with China.) Now that Lee was president, he would see that reunification with China never happened.
By the 1996 presidential election, Newsweek's "Mr. Democracy" was openly inciting Minnan Chinese to hate post-1949 arrivals from other provinces, referred to misleadingly as "mainlanders."
In fact all ethnic Chinese on Taiwan are "mainlanders." Some arrived earlier, some arrived later. Only the Aborigines, which constitute less than 2% of the population can claim to be "Native Taiwanese." Their status is akin to that of Polynesians in Hawaii, now America's 50th state.
With Lee's encouragement, thuggish Taiwan independence cabbies assaulted bewildered "mainlander" mothers with children in tow, screaming "Chinese pigs, get the hell back to the mainland!" Lee's coded campaign slogan "Taiwanese vote Taiwanese, mainlanders vote mainlander," was merely the local component of his larger anti-reunification strategy, which called for provoking enough hatred against "mainlanders" and mainland China that eventual reconciliation would be a political impossibility.
Poll numbers routinely cited by separatists to "prove" popular opposition to reunification are Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian's payoffs for "1984" style "Two Minutes Hate" campaigns. These orchestrated efforts have yielded blips in populist mob sentiment dutifully archived for future use as separatist propaganda. Respectable scholars and academics repeatedly decry this transparent incitement of irrational hatred on TV talk shows, but the Taiwan independence agitators simply ignore them and redouble their efforts.
To the separatists' chagrin however, and the Taiwan public's immense credit, more sophisticated voters have more often than not ignored their demagoguery and voted for the best man for the job regardless of provincial origin. Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's resounding victory in 1998 over petty tribalist Chen Shui-bian, who played the "ethnicity card" to the hilt, amounted to a defacto rejection of petty ethnic prejudice among Taipei's more cosmopolitan voters.
Taiwan "independence" truly is an oxymoron. The Taiwan independence leaders' lips flap and ringing affirmations of "independence" issue forth, but the Taiwan independence leaders' insides are incarcerated in a psychic prison of complete and utter dependency. Dependent materially on the US Navy's Seventh Fleet for their "independent" political status, and dependent psychologically on Japan for their sense of pseudo self-esteem as ersatz Japanese.
The Taiwan independence leadership has made zero effort to come to terms with their unresolved issues through self-introspection. Instead, they have taken their personal/collective psychological conflict and externalized it as an international political conflict. Their very real emotional pain, which deserves to be dealt with, but on a therapist's couch or in an encounter group, is instead on the verge of being played out as deadly psychodrama on the battlefield.
Famed author, historian and ex-political prisoner Li Ao, the pro-reunification New Party's long shot presidential candidate, yesterday publicly exposed KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan's two sons and son-in-law as draft evaders, granted special exemptions by the Ministry of Defense. Apparently Vice President Lien's "princelings" lives are too precious to risk on the front lines fighting for the "independence" Lee Teng-hui and his handpicked successor Lien so self-righteously demand for Taiwan. [Update 2005: Over the years since Lee Teng-hui's ignominious departure from the KMT, former Vice President Lien Chan has emerged from under Lee Teng-hui's shadow. He has demonstrated by his deeds that he did not share Lee Teng-hui's treasonous political values and has become a surprisingly capable and responsible political leader.]
Li Ao also exposed DPP presidential challenger Chen Shui-bian as a draft evader. Chen, a loudmouth Taiwan independence grandstander whose attitude is "Declare independence now! To hell with the consequences!" promptly went on TV, all weepy and teary-eyed, pleading physical disability, which he helpfully demonstrated for the television cameras by bending one elbow outward slightly farther than normal.
Whether the Taiwan "independence" leaders ever come to terms with their collective identity crisis is no one's affair but their own. If the Taiwan independence elite decide they really prefer to be Japanese rather than Chinese, they are free to emigrate to Japan. Their indisputable right to make that choice will be honored. But if they imagine patriotic Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits are going to stand idly by while they take a chunk of sovereign Chinese real estate along with them, they have another think coming. And if the Taiwan separatist elite expect a free lunch paid for with American tax dollars and American blood, then it is time for every sovereign American who values his own life and his own plans for his future, to co-opt a slogan from the Sixties and shout "Hell no! We won't go!"
Appendix: Two Articles on the Stockholm Syndrome
Psychological Responses to Terrorism
by Rev. Fr. Charles T. Brusca
At 10:15 A.M. on Thursday, August 23rd, 1973 the Sveriges Kreditbank of Stockholm, Sweden was rocked by sub-machine gun fire. "The party has just begun," announced a 32 year old prison escapee named Jan-Erik Olsson. The party, indeed, continued for some 131 hours, or five and a half days, as Olsson held four of the bank's employees hostage in an 11 by 47 foot vault until late in the evening of August 28th.
While the Sveriges Kreditbank robbery itself may not have been of world shattering importance, later interviews with the four hostages yielded surprising results -- results that have been confirmed in numerous other hostage situations in the years that followed. Even though the captives themselves were not able to explain it, they displayed a strange association with their captors, identifying with them while fearing those who sought to end their captivity. In some cases they later testified on behalf of or raised money for the legal defense of their captors. The Swedish location of the Sveriges Kreditbank gave its name to this mental aberration as "The Stockholm Syndrome".
Long-term psychological study of this and similar hostage situations has defined a fairly clear and characteristic set of symptoms for the Stockholm Syndrome:
The captives begin to identify with their captors. At least at first this is a defensive mechanism, based on the (often unconscious) idea that the captor will not hurt the captive if he is cooperative and even positively supportive. The captive seeks to win the favor of the captor in an almost childlike way.
The captive often realizes that action taken by his would-be rescuers is very likely to hurt him instead of obtaining his release. Attempts at rescue may turn a presently tolerable situation into a lethal one. If the bullets of the authorities don't get him, quite possibly those of the provoked captor will.
Long term captivity builds even stronger attachment to the captor as he becomes known as a human being with his own problems and aspirations. Particularly in political or ideological situations, longer captivity also allows the captive to become familiar with the captor's point of view and the history of his grievances against authority. He may come to believe that the captor's position is just.
The captive seeks to distance himself emotionally from the situation by denial that it is actually taking place. He fancies that "it is all a dream," or loses himself in excessive periods of sleep, or in delusions of being magically rescued. He may try to forget the situation by engaging in useless but time consuming "busy work". Depending on his degree of identification with the captor he may deny that the captor is at fault, holding that the would-be rescuers and their insistence on punishing the captor are really to blame for his situation.
The Stockholm Syndrome: Not Just For Hostages
by Dee L.R. Graham, Edna Rawlings, Nelly Rimini
"The Stockholm Syndrome is an emotional attachment, a bond of interdependence between captive and captor that develops 'when someone threatens your life, deliberates, and doesn't kill you." (Symonds, 1980) The relief resulting from the removal of the threat of death generates intense feelings of gratitude and fear which combine to make the captive reluctant to display negative feelings toward the captor or terrorist. In fact, former hostages have visited their captors in jail, recommended defense counsel, and even started a defense fund. It is this dynamic which causes former hostages and abuse survivors to minimize the damage done to them and refuse to cooperate in prosecuting their tormentors.
"The victims' need to survive is stronger than his impulse to hate the person who has created his dilemma." (Strentz, 1980) The victim comes to see the captor as a 'good guy', even a savior. This condition...occurs in response to the four specific conditions listed below:
One -- A person threatens to kill another and is perceived as having the capability to do so.
Two -- The other cannot escape, so her or his life depends on the threatening person.
Three -- The threatened person is isolated from outsiders so that the only other perspective available to her or him is that of the threatening person.
Four -- The threatening person is perceived as showing some degree of kindness to the one being threatened.
Victims' Observed Strategies for Survival
Victims have to concentrate on survival, requiring avoidance of direct, honest reaction to destructive treatment. Become highly attuned to pleasure and displeasure reactions of victimizers. As a result, victims know much about captors, less about themselves. Victims are encouraged to develop psychological characteristics pleasing to captors: dependency, lack of initiative, inability to act, decide, think, etc. Both actively develop strategies for staying alive, including denial, attentiveness to victimizer's wants, fondness for victimizer accompanied by fear, fear of interference by authorities, and adoption of victimizer's perspective. Hostages are overwhelmingly grateful to terrorists for giving them life. They focus on captor's kindnesses, not his acts of brutality. Battered women assume that the abuser is a good man whose actions stem from problems that she can help him solve. Both feel fear, as well as love, compassion and empathy toward a captor who has shown them any kindness. Any acts of kindness by the captors will help ease the emotional distress they have created and will set the stage for emotional dependency of Counterproductive Victim Responses.
Denial of terror and anger, and the perception of their victimizers as omnipotent people help to keep victims psychologically attached to victimizers. High anxiety functions to keep victims from seeing available options. Psychophysical stress responses develop.
The Real Reason the Taiwan Independence Elite refuses to be reunited with China.
Bevin Chu
September 06, 1999
Question: What is the real reason the Taiwan independence elite refuses to be reunited with China?
A. Because the Taiwan independence elite are "Native Taiwanese" who were colonized in 1949 by "Han Chinese" the way Australia and New Zealand were colonized by the British.
B. Because although the Taiwan independence elite are themselves Chinese, they are like America's Founding Fathers, and prefer death to colonial oppression.
C. Because the Taiwan independence elite are principled champions of free market capitalism, and reunification would mean they would have to live under socialism.
D. Because the Taiwan independence elite are victim/victimizers in a still unresolved "Stockholm Syndrome" identity crisis with its roots in a half century of humiliating Japanese colonialism.
If you answered A, B, or C, go to the back of the class.
If you answered D, should be writing this article, not me, for you already understand the underlying social psychology of Taiwanese separatism, better even than the Taiwan "independence" leaders themselves.
Let's look at the answers.
A. Because the Taiwan independence elite are "Native Taiwanese" who were colonized in 1949 by "Han Chinese" the way Australia and New Zealand were colonized by the British.
Wrong. Taiwan separatist leaders fraudulently label themselves as "Native Taiwanese." They are not. They are Chinese. Most are from Fujian province a mere 90 miles to the west. A minority are from Guangdong province slightly further south. Taiwanese is not a language, merely a regional dialect of Chinese. It is not even native to Taiwan, but originates in the Minnan ("South of the Min River") region of Fujian. The real "Native Taiwanese" are Aborigines related to New Zealand's Maori, who migrated to Taiwan in prehistoric times, and whom early Chinese settlers drove into the mountains. Taiwan independence is not an aboriginal rights movement and should not be confused with the Hawaiian independence or American Indian movements.
B. Because although the Taiwan independence elite are themselves Chinese, they are like America's Founding Fathers, and prefer death to colonial oppression.
Wrong. The American Revolution was motivated by political idealism. It was a radical republican rejection of a monarch's economic exploitation of a colonial population. ("No taxation without representation.") Americans of British descent who no longer considered themselves British were not ashamed of or rejecting their ethnic and cultural roots, they were inventing a revolutionary new political and economic paradigm which necessitated the severing of political ties with an obsolete form of governance.
Taiwan "independence" on the other hand is not about anything remotely so elevated. Quite the opposite. Far from rejecting colonialism, Taiwan "independence" is about nostalgia for Japanese colonial rule by Chinese collaborators with inferiority complexes who prefer to be something they are not, Japanese, rather than what they are, Chinese. It is about the neurotic need of an "elite" ruling class of Chinese Quislings to deny their ethnic and cultural identity ("We don't want to be Chinese").
To understand the mindset of the Taiwan independence elite, try to imagine Jewish victims of the Shoah as militant Holocaust denyers. Mind-boggling, I know, but truth is often stranger than fiction. Merely one example: on orders from Lee Teng-hui, the ROC Ministry of Education is busily engaged in Orwellian historical revisionism, rewriting K-12 textbooks to echo textbooks in Japan, which whitewash WWII Japanese war crimes while blaming China and other victims of Japanese militarism.
C. Because the Taiwan independence elite are principled champions of free market capitalism, and reunification would mean they would have to live under socialism.
Wrong. When it looked as if communism was gaining the upper hand, Lee joined the Taiwan Communist Party. Lee's Communist Party membership papers have been made public on TV talk shows both here in Taipei and in Beijing. The irony is that if Lee had not been the craven opportunist he is, he would not even be alive today to occupy the office of ROC President. When the political winds abruptly shifted, Lee saved his own miserable hide by ratting out the poor saps he himself recruited, who were executed by firing squad.
The shrilly pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) meanwhile, is exactly what it sounds like, a left wing, populist, democratic socialist party. Its rabid anti-business animus recently forced Germany's Bayer corporation to pull out of Taiwan in disgust after years of fruitless negotiations and millions in squandered preliminary groundwork for a proposed pharmaceutical plant in DPP contolled Taichung. [Update 2005: Over the years since this article was first penned, the liberal and progressive elements in the DPP have either left in disgust or been excommunicated, and the DPP has degenerated into a right-wing fascist party.]
Staunch anti-communist Chiang Kai-shek was responsible for Taiwan's universally acknowledged and justly praised "economic miracle." His economic advisors, implementing the same kind of economic strategies Ludwig Erhard used to breath life back into a West Germany leveled by Allied bombing, transformed an impoverished, exploited Japanese colony into one of the four "Asian Tigers." His son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo was responsible for Taiwan's democratization. The younger Chiang rescinded martial law, legalized opposition political parties, and aggressively promoted Min Nan, Hakka and Aboriginal Taiwanese into positions of authority.
Lee Teng-hui, on the other hand, contrary to what his high-priced Madison Avenue image consultants have bamboozled the western media into believing, contributed nothing to Taiwan's economic and political evolution. Soon after mentor Chiang Ching-kuo's death, Lee betrayed Chiang's tragically misplaced trust by turning Taiwan into a nightmare version of "Asian crony capitalism." Lee Teng-hui is nothing less than Taiwan's answer to Ferdinand Marcos. His wife Tseng Wen-hui's shopping expeditions to Japan are legendary, and put Imelda to shame.
Lee's sole "democratic reform" was to change presidential elections from indirect election by an American style Electoral College to direct election by the general public. Whatever benefits may have accrued from this procedural change have been offset negatively many times over by Lee's shredding of the ROC Constitution, Lee's undermining of Taiwan's still shakey commitment to the Rule of Law, and Lee's flinging the doors of government offices wide open to organized crime. According to Liao Cheng-hao, former Minister of Justice who resigned last year in disgust, thirty percent of Lee Teng-hui's KMT leglislators have triad (mob) connections.
Is Beijing dying to impose communism on either Hongkong, Macao, or Taiwan? Are you kidding? Just ask any diehard Marxists in the west what they think of the current regime in Beijing. They'll sputter with apoplexy that contemptible "Capitalist Roaders" like radical reformer Zhu Rongi have sold socialism down the river. Beijing today doesn't even want socialism for the mainland, let alone for Hongkong, Macao, or Taiwan.
It should be abundantly clear by now that answers A through C are not the real reason the Taiwan independence elite refuse to be reunited with China.
This leaves,
D. Because the Taiwan independence elite are victim/victimizers in a still unresolved "Stockholm Syndrome" identity crisis with its roots in a half century of humiliating Japanese colonialism.
Correct. Go to the head of the class! The Taiwan "independence" movement's real reason for not wanting to be reunited with China has nothing to do with ritual lip service the Taiwan independence elite mechanically pay to freedom, democracy, or capitalism, but rather with something about which they are in massive denial. It is seldom dealt with honestly even here in Taiwan, and never abroad. Taiwan independence is the Taiwan separatist elites' collective struggle with a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome -- a fawning, masochistic Japanophilia. Taiwan independence is the lingering aftereffect of Japan's soul-degrading 50 year colonial occupation.
In 1895 a newly invigorated, militarized Japan attacked a decadent, defenseless Manchu China and extorted from China her offshore province of Taiwan. In a heart-rending scenario straight out of "Sophie's Choice," Taiwan Chinese learned their own government had sacrificed them, albeit at gunpoint. Their feeling of bewilderment and disorientation can only be imagined.
This experience prompted an "elite" clique of Quislings on Taiwan to totally identify with their colonial overlords and to deny their Chinese-ness. Better an ersatz Japanese, they reasoned, than a bona fide Chinese. After all, wasn't it more dignified to be a second class citizen of the invincible Japanese juggernaut, than to be a full-fledged citizen of an enervated China too impotent even to prevent her people from being kidnapped and her territory from being annexed? Everybody loves a champ, nobody loves a chump.
Lee Teng-hui was born into a family permeated with this Quisling mindset, what the Japanese colonial government called a "Guoyu Jiating" or "National Language Family," meaning the family worked for Japan, spoke Japanese, adopted Japanese names, swore allegiance to the Japanese Emperor, and were "politically reliable." Lee himself has publicly repeated numerous times that before age twenty-two he considered himself Japanese.
In a news article entitled "Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's Tears," a Member of Japan's Parliament after interviewing Lee told the Japan Daily Post, "Lee Teng-hui received a Japanese education during Japanese occupation. His older brother was a soldier in the Japanese Imperial Army and died in action. The result is Lee Teng-hui is in his own heart and in his own eyes even more Japanese than the Japanese. His yearning and homesickness for Japan is intense."
During WWII, each time news reached Taiwan that the Japanese Imperial Army had scored another victory against American and Chinese troops in the Pacific Theater, Lee Teng-hui would on his own initiative, without any external coercion, rally classmates at Tamkiang High School to hold pro-Japan victory marches, with himself leading the procession, jubilantly waving a Japanese flag and shouting "Banzai."
While Taiwan independence Quislings like Lee Teng-hui, Peng Ming-min and others lived lives of luxury and privilege in Kyoto and Tokyo by selling out their fellow Chinese on Taiwan, Taiwanese men who refused to actively collaborate were shipped off to the South Pacific as slave labor constructing military bases or as cannon fodder on the front lines. Taiwanese women were abducted and installed in brothels to serve Japanese soldiers as sex slaves, subjected to year after year of gang rape.
In 1987, when Chiang Ching-kuo died, ethnic harmony prevailed on Taiwan. Millions of ordinary citizens, young and old, rich and poor, Minnan, Hakka, Aborigine, and post-1949 arrivals from other provinces all turned out for his funeral procession. People wept openly. The depth of their gratitude was profound. The two Chiangs, authoritarian warts and all, had spared the ROC from Mao's madness and lifted Taiwan's people out of poverty. Taiwanese peasants formerly ground under the heel of Japanese colonial overlords now drove Mercs and Bimmers. Even animosity dating from the bloody 2-28 Incident of 1947, deliberately incited by diehard Japanese right-wingers who remained behind as Fifth Columnists to sabotage Taiwan's retrocession, was a thing of the past. Gradual but eventual German style reunification with a post-Maoist, rapidly liberalizing mainland was only a matter of time.
Alas, it did not take long for Lee Teng-hui, whom Chiang Ching-kuo made the monumental error of entrusting to carry on his reformist legacy, to betray his mentor, not to mention his Constitutional Oath of Office. Unbeknownst to Chiang, reunification was the last thing on Lee's mind. (Actually reunification was on Lee's mind, only with Japan, not with China.) Now that Lee was president, he would see that reunification with China never happened.
By the 1996 presidential election, Newsweek's "Mr. Democracy" was openly inciting Minnan Chinese to hate post-1949 arrivals from other provinces, referred to misleadingly as "mainlanders."
In fact all ethnic Chinese on Taiwan are "mainlanders." Some arrived earlier, some arrived later. Only the Aborigines, which constitute less than 2% of the population can claim to be "Native Taiwanese." Their status is akin to that of Polynesians in Hawaii, now America's 50th state.
With Lee's encouragement, thuggish Taiwan independence cabbies assaulted bewildered "mainlander" mothers with children in tow, screaming "Chinese pigs, get the hell back to the mainland!" Lee's coded campaign slogan "Taiwanese vote Taiwanese, mainlanders vote mainlander," was merely the local component of his larger anti-reunification strategy, which called for provoking enough hatred against "mainlanders" and mainland China that eventual reconciliation would be a political impossibility.
Poll numbers routinely cited by separatists to "prove" popular opposition to reunification are Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian's payoffs for "1984" style "Two Minutes Hate" campaigns. These orchestrated efforts have yielded blips in populist mob sentiment dutifully archived for future use as separatist propaganda. Respectable scholars and academics repeatedly decry this transparent incitement of irrational hatred on TV talk shows, but the Taiwan independence agitators simply ignore them and redouble their efforts.
To the separatists' chagrin however, and the Taiwan public's immense credit, more sophisticated voters have more often than not ignored their demagoguery and voted for the best man for the job regardless of provincial origin. Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's resounding victory in 1998 over petty tribalist Chen Shui-bian, who played the "ethnicity card" to the hilt, amounted to a defacto rejection of petty ethnic prejudice among Taipei's more cosmopolitan voters.
Taiwan "independence" truly is an oxymoron. The Taiwan independence leaders' lips flap and ringing affirmations of "independence" issue forth, but the Taiwan independence leaders' insides are incarcerated in a psychic prison of complete and utter dependency. Dependent materially on the US Navy's Seventh Fleet for their "independent" political status, and dependent psychologically on Japan for their sense of pseudo self-esteem as ersatz Japanese.
The Taiwan independence leadership has made zero effort to come to terms with their unresolved issues through self-introspection. Instead, they have taken their personal/collective psychological conflict and externalized it as an international political conflict. Their very real emotional pain, which deserves to be dealt with, but on a therapist's couch or in an encounter group, is instead on the verge of being played out as deadly psychodrama on the battlefield.
Famed author, historian and ex-political prisoner Li Ao, the pro-reunification New Party's long shot presidential candidate, yesterday publicly exposed KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan's two sons and son-in-law as draft evaders, granted special exemptions by the Ministry of Defense. Apparently Vice President Lien's "princelings" lives are too precious to risk on the front lines fighting for the "independence" Lee Teng-hui and his handpicked successor Lien so self-righteously demand for Taiwan. [Update 2005: Over the years since Lee Teng-hui's ignominious departure from the KMT, former Vice President Lien Chan has emerged from under Lee Teng-hui's shadow. He has demonstrated by his deeds that he did not share Lee Teng-hui's treasonous political values and has become a surprisingly capable and responsible political leader.]
Li Ao also exposed DPP presidential challenger Chen Shui-bian as a draft evader. Chen, a loudmouth Taiwan independence grandstander whose attitude is "Declare independence now! To hell with the consequences!" promptly went on TV, all weepy and teary-eyed, pleading physical disability, which he helpfully demonstrated for the television cameras by bending one elbow outward slightly farther than normal.
Whether the Taiwan "independence" leaders ever come to terms with their collective identity crisis is no one's affair but their own. If the Taiwan independence elite decide they really prefer to be Japanese rather than Chinese, they are free to emigrate to Japan. Their indisputable right to make that choice will be honored. But if they imagine patriotic Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits are going to stand idly by while they take a chunk of sovereign Chinese real estate along with them, they have another think coming. And if the Taiwan separatist elite expect a free lunch paid for with American tax dollars and American blood, then it is time for every sovereign American who values his own life and his own plans for his future, to co-opt a slogan from the Sixties and shout "Hell no! We won't go!"
Appendix: Two Articles on the Stockholm Syndrome
Psychological Responses to Terrorism
by Rev. Fr. Charles T. Brusca
At 10:15 A.M. on Thursday, August 23rd, 1973 the Sveriges Kreditbank of Stockholm, Sweden was rocked by sub-machine gun fire. "The party has just begun," announced a 32 year old prison escapee named Jan-Erik Olsson. The party, indeed, continued for some 131 hours, or five and a half days, as Olsson held four of the bank's employees hostage in an 11 by 47 foot vault until late in the evening of August 28th.
While the Sveriges Kreditbank robbery itself may not have been of world shattering importance, later interviews with the four hostages yielded surprising results -- results that have been confirmed in numerous other hostage situations in the years that followed. Even though the captives themselves were not able to explain it, they displayed a strange association with their captors, identifying with them while fearing those who sought to end their captivity. In some cases they later testified on behalf of or raised money for the legal defense of their captors. The Swedish location of the Sveriges Kreditbank gave its name to this mental aberration as "The Stockholm Syndrome".
Long-term psychological study of this and similar hostage situations has defined a fairly clear and characteristic set of symptoms for the Stockholm Syndrome:
The captives begin to identify with their captors. At least at first this is a defensive mechanism, based on the (often unconscious) idea that the captor will not hurt the captive if he is cooperative and even positively supportive. The captive seeks to win the favor of the captor in an almost childlike way.
The captive often realizes that action taken by his would-be rescuers is very likely to hurt him instead of obtaining his release. Attempts at rescue may turn a presently tolerable situation into a lethal one. If the bullets of the authorities don't get him, quite possibly those of the provoked captor will.
Long term captivity builds even stronger attachment to the captor as he becomes known as a human being with his own problems and aspirations. Particularly in political or ideological situations, longer captivity also allows the captive to become familiar with the captor's point of view and the history of his grievances against authority. He may come to believe that the captor's position is just.
The captive seeks to distance himself emotionally from the situation by denial that it is actually taking place. He fancies that "it is all a dream," or loses himself in excessive periods of sleep, or in delusions of being magically rescued. He may try to forget the situation by engaging in useless but time consuming "busy work". Depending on his degree of identification with the captor he may deny that the captor is at fault, holding that the would-be rescuers and their insistence on punishing the captor are really to blame for his situation.
The Stockholm Syndrome: Not Just For Hostages
by Dee L.R. Graham, Edna Rawlings, Nelly Rimini
"The Stockholm Syndrome is an emotional attachment, a bond of interdependence between captive and captor that develops 'when someone threatens your life, deliberates, and doesn't kill you." (Symonds, 1980) The relief resulting from the removal of the threat of death generates intense feelings of gratitude and fear which combine to make the captive reluctant to display negative feelings toward the captor or terrorist. In fact, former hostages have visited their captors in jail, recommended defense counsel, and even started a defense fund. It is this dynamic which causes former hostages and abuse survivors to minimize the damage done to them and refuse to cooperate in prosecuting their tormentors.
"The victims' need to survive is stronger than his impulse to hate the person who has created his dilemma." (Strentz, 1980) The victim comes to see the captor as a 'good guy', even a savior. This condition...occurs in response to the four specific conditions listed below:
One -- A person threatens to kill another and is perceived as having the capability to do so.
Two -- The other cannot escape, so her or his life depends on the threatening person.
Three -- The threatened person is isolated from outsiders so that the only other perspective available to her or him is that of the threatening person.
Four -- The threatening person is perceived as showing some degree of kindness to the one being threatened.
Victims' Observed Strategies for Survival
Victims have to concentrate on survival, requiring avoidance of direct, honest reaction to destructive treatment. Become highly attuned to pleasure and displeasure reactions of victimizers. As a result, victims know much about captors, less about themselves. Victims are encouraged to develop psychological characteristics pleasing to captors: dependency, lack of initiative, inability to act, decide, think, etc. Both actively develop strategies for staying alive, including denial, attentiveness to victimizer's wants, fondness for victimizer accompanied by fear, fear of interference by authorities, and adoption of victimizer's perspective. Hostages are overwhelmingly grateful to terrorists for giving them life. They focus on captor's kindnesses, not his acts of brutality. Battered women assume that the abuser is a good man whose actions stem from problems that she can help him solve. Both feel fear, as well as love, compassion and empathy toward a captor who has shown them any kindness. Any acts of kindness by the captors will help ease the emotional distress they have created and will set the stage for emotional dependency of Counterproductive Victim Responses.
Denial of terror and anger, and the perception of their victimizers as omnipotent people help to keep victims psychologically attached to victimizers. High anxiety functions to keep victims from seeing available options. Psychophysical stress responses develop.
Monday, August 23, 1999
Taiwan Independence and Free Lunches
Taiwan Independence and Free Lunches
Bevin Chu
August 23, 1999
A standing joke among "Sinologists," or China experts, is that the Taiwan independence movement's leaders are "ready to fight to the last American G.I." The Taiwan independence motto could be summed up as "Give me liberty, or give them death."
Taiwan independence has little to do with genuine independence. Taiwan "independence" is characterized by complete and utter dependency, materially and emotionally, on whomever weilds the most power. A cliche constantly invoked in Taiwan political debates says it all: "Xi gua kao da bian" ("The watermelon tilts toward the big end.")
Materially, the Taiwan independence movement is utterly dependent on America. Every evening reunification proponents warn militant separatists on television debates they are courting disaster, and every evening the separatists argue that America will shield them from the negative consequences of refusing to negotiate in good faith with the Chinese mainland.
So far they have been proven right. Lawrence Eagleburger, Secretary of State to former President George Bush lamented in the wake of President Bill Clinton's kneejerk dispatch of two carrier battle groups to the Taiwan Straits in 1996, "They (Taiwan) have played us like a fiddle."
The Taiwan Relations Act's raison d'etre ended with Chairman Mao's death and his replacement by the man Mao denounced as the "Number Two Capitalist Roader," Deng Xiaoping. Whatever purpose it may have once served, it is now merely a blank check signed by Uncle Sam and made out to the Taiwan separatist leadership, to be cashed at their convenience. The amount is yet to be determined, but sooner or later it will be inked in with the blood of American G.I.s.
The east Asian financial crisis was an textbook case of what economists refer to as "moral hazard." International Monetary Fund guarantees amounted to an artificial incentive for wealthy investors to indulge in high-risk speculation, knowing the IMF would pull their chestnuts out of the fire if they underestimated how hot it would get.
The Taiwan Relations Act is the political and military analog of IMF bailout guarantees, amounting to an artificial incentive for "stealth separatists" like Lee Teng-hui to deliberately adopt non-starter negotiating positions and engage in reckless brinksmanship. They know the US Seventh Fleet will come steaming to their rescue if they overplay their hand and Beijing calls their bluff.
The moral hazard of IMF intervention resulted in east Asia bleeding oceans of red ink. The moral hazard of well-intentioned but wrong-headed assurances of American military intervention in the Taiwan Straits will bleed oceans of something far more precious.
American military leaders who may be required to send Americans into combat are painfully aware of the implications of Lee Teng-hui's shenanigans. As Admiral Dennis Blair, America's top military commander in the Pacific testified before Congress, Taiwan was crapping in the "punch bowl" of US-China relations.
ROC President Lee Teng-hui watched with delight as the US Air Force served as the air wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The timing of Lee's "two nations" provocation was hardly coincidental, coming as it did on the heels of Nato's Chinese Embassy bombing fiasco. Lee interpreted the event as his cue to stoop over the punchbowl and take yet another dump.
Fifty-eight thousand Americans ordered to Vietnam by ungrateful civilian REMFs came home in bodybags. A black granite monument on the National Mall inscribed with their names serves as a solemn reminder of that tragic waste of American lives.
If our Beltway Bombardiers have failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam, as it appears they have, and pointlessly dispatch young Americans halfway around the world to intervene in a Chinese Civil War that is none of our business, how many will return in bodybags from the Taiwan Straits? After it is all over, win, lose or draw, what would they have died for?
Are American values what the Taiwan separatists hold sacred and expect American fighing men and women to die for? If that were the case, American intervention on the separatists' behalf might be slightly less absurd. But as we shall see, American values are not what the Taiwan independence movement is all about.
Ignore the scripted, feel-good speeches high-powered American PR firms like Cassidy and Associates have carefully coached Lee Teng-hui to spoonfeed our congress and mainstream media. Ignore especially his 1996 "Always in my Heart" class reunion speech at Cornell, where he really laid it on with a trowel.
Instead find someone fluent in Chinese or better yet, Japanese, to translate what Lee and other Taiwanese separatists have written for the consumption of separatist militants in Taiwan and neo-fascist fellow travellers in Japan. Americans may be shocked to discover the Taiwanese separatists' bottom line objection to eventual reunification with China has little to do with professed admiration for American concepts of individualism, liberty, republican government, and everything to do with nostalgia for authoritarian Japanese colonial rule.
Lee Teng-hui's book "Taiwan's Proposal," published shortly before his "two nations" declaration, is Lee's manifesto for Taiwan's future. It was ghost-written by an anonymous Japanese author from a right wing Japanese perspective. The first edition was in written in Japanese and printed in Japan. Only later was it translated into Chinese and printed in Taiwan. In it Lee praises Japanese culture as being incomparably superior to American culture. Lee boasts publicly that he is more thoroughly steeped in Japanese culture than even the average Japanese.
In case that went by too fast, let me repeat it. A manifesto by the President of the Republic of China, purporting to represent the interests of the people of Taiwan, is actually penned by a neofascist Japanese author in Japan, published in Japan, and only gets translated into Chinese afterwards?
Hello?
During a 1995 interview with visiting Japanese author Ryotaro Shiba, President Lee Teng-hui ordered his cabinet and bodyguards out of his office, and speaking in Japanese to a long lost countryman, gushed that he still considered himself Japanese until a young adult, wept when he heard Japan had surrended to the Allies and was returning Taiwan to China, and that his grief upon hearing Emperor Hirohito had died was more profound than that of Japanese in Japan. The conversation was ostensibly confidential, but Shiba, being a journalist first and Lee's confidant only in Lee's fevered imagination, promptly published their little tete a tete verbatim the minute he got back to Japan, where Japanese neo-fascists applauded it enthusiastically.
Far from being freedom fighters, Taiwanese "independence" leaders fell over each other to collaborate with Japanese colonial administrators for personal advantage.
Lee Teng-hui's father collaborated by serving as a deputy in the colonial Japanese police force, actively oppressing his own people. In return, his family received comfortable housing, quality rations, and educational opportunities. Lee Teng-hui himself attended the Universty of Kyoto, a singular "honor" doled out only to those deemed "politically reliable."
Lee's chief negotiator in cross-Straits negotiations with Beijing is crony capitalist Koo Chen-fu. An historian at Taiwan's Academia Sineca recently exposed Koo and the Koo family business empire as WWII era profiteers engaged in the selling of Taiwanese women into sexual slavery.
Younger Taiwan independence leaders born too late to have been collaborators routinely offer elaborate rationalizations for WWII era Japanese war crimes on local talk shows.
When China was refused an apology in writing from Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi for WWII war crimes, which included years of gang rape of Taiwanese "comfort women" and Joseph Mengele style Unit 731 "medical experiments" performed on American POWs in Manchuria, Lee Teng-hui huffily proclaimed that "Japan has apologized enough. Any further apologizing will only harm Japan's dignity!"
Just before Lee threw his"two nations" gauntlet at Beijing's feet, he told Taiwan's media he detected early storm clouds of "kamikaze" ("divine wind") gathering over the island of Taiwan. The media was baffled by his cryptic remark, but his intention soon became clear. Time is running out for Lee, just as it ran out for Japan's kamikaze squadrons approaching V-J Day. Lee is hoping his"two nations" proclamation will provoke war. As Dr Alex Kao, an expert on Chinese military strategy sees it, Lee is gambling that the mainland "will launch a premature war now which 15 years from now Taiwan would have no chance of winning."
Emotionally the Taiwan "independence" elite is dependent on their former colonial master, Japan, into whose arms they will fling themselves if their divorce from China becomes a reality. Taiwan "independence" is merely a way station en route their final destination, Tokyo. Even their proposed "Republic of Taiwan" flag is a fascimile of the Japanese Emperor's "Chrysanthemum Flag." Taiwan separatists would be jubilant if upon achieving "independence" they are promptly re-colonized by Japan.
Taiwan independence is a movement which if genuinely understood would evoke scant sympathy from Americans, certainly not from American POWs who survived the Bataan Death March, and the Taiwan independence leaders know it. So instead they recite the catechism they know patriotic Americans want to hear: Freedom, democracy, anti-communism.
In a sense we shouldn't blame the Taiwan "independence" parasites, who are really no different from sundry homegrown parasites. The parasites know perfectly well they're getting a free lunch at American taxpayers' expense, but as long as their generous Uncle Sammy insists on picking up the tab, they'd be crazy to pass up a free meal.
A few million in strategically distributed political contributions by the immensely wealthy Taiwan Lobby, and presto, highly trained military personnel and trillions in advanced weaponry belonging to the World's Only Remaining Superpower are placed at their disposal. Americans who enlisted in our armed forces on the understanding their duty was to defend American territory from foreign invaders find themselves job-shopped as mercenaries to would be founders of a would be "Republic of Taiwan." The Taiwan tail winds up wagging the American dog. The Taiwan mouse roars, and the proud American eagle crosses the Pacific to do the mouse's bidding.
A pretty shrewd bargain for the Taiwan "independence" movement. But what kind of a deal is it for Americans? We owe it to ourselves to consider long and hard whether Taiwan independence is something American taxpayers want to pay for with our sweat and American fighting men and women want to pay for with their blood.
What will happen to 22 million ordinary Taiwanese if America repeals the Taiwan Relations Act and informs the obdurate separatist Lee Teng-hui "You want independence? Lots of luck. You're on your own."
The answer is: Not a damned thing.
Instead the Taiwan independence movement's Japanophile elite will be forced to listen, for a change, to the 80% majority of Taiwan people who oppose Taiwan independence and are perfectly content with defacto autonomy. If they don't, the people will elect a more rational president, one who will drive a hard bargain and negotiate a high degree of regional autonomy under a "One Country, Two Systems" formula. Later, as the mainland liberalizes to a degree deemed satisfactory by Taiwan, the two sides will reunify peacefully along the lines of East and West Germany.
Both America and China will win. Heavily armed Taiwan will get an even better deal than Hongkong, which to the chagrin of China-haters has remained utterly unmolested since its restoration to China, despite being completely unarmed.
Only the Taiwanese separatist fanatics will lose. Without America's credit card on the dinner table they will have to stare at the prices on the menu before ordering. Without American carte blanche, Lee Teng-hui and his Taiwan "independence" elite will have to ask themselves whether their dream of becoming a satellite of Japan is worth risking their own miserable hides, rather than the lives of American servicemen and women.
But, as the libertarian battle cry coined by the late, great libertarian science fiction master Robert Heinlein goes, "Tanstaafl!" or "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!"
Bevin Chu
August 23, 1999
A standing joke among "Sinologists," or China experts, is that the Taiwan independence movement's leaders are "ready to fight to the last American G.I." The Taiwan independence motto could be summed up as "Give me liberty, or give them death."
Taiwan independence has little to do with genuine independence. Taiwan "independence" is characterized by complete and utter dependency, materially and emotionally, on whomever weilds the most power. A cliche constantly invoked in Taiwan political debates says it all: "Xi gua kao da bian" ("The watermelon tilts toward the big end.")
Materially, the Taiwan independence movement is utterly dependent on America. Every evening reunification proponents warn militant separatists on television debates they are courting disaster, and every evening the separatists argue that America will shield them from the negative consequences of refusing to negotiate in good faith with the Chinese mainland.
So far they have been proven right. Lawrence Eagleburger, Secretary of State to former President George Bush lamented in the wake of President Bill Clinton's kneejerk dispatch of two carrier battle groups to the Taiwan Straits in 1996, "They (Taiwan) have played us like a fiddle."
The Taiwan Relations Act's raison d'etre ended with Chairman Mao's death and his replacement by the man Mao denounced as the "Number Two Capitalist Roader," Deng Xiaoping. Whatever purpose it may have once served, it is now merely a blank check signed by Uncle Sam and made out to the Taiwan separatist leadership, to be cashed at their convenience. The amount is yet to be determined, but sooner or later it will be inked in with the blood of American G.I.s.
The east Asian financial crisis was an textbook case of what economists refer to as "moral hazard." International Monetary Fund guarantees amounted to an artificial incentive for wealthy investors to indulge in high-risk speculation, knowing the IMF would pull their chestnuts out of the fire if they underestimated how hot it would get.
The Taiwan Relations Act is the political and military analog of IMF bailout guarantees, amounting to an artificial incentive for "stealth separatists" like Lee Teng-hui to deliberately adopt non-starter negotiating positions and engage in reckless brinksmanship. They know the US Seventh Fleet will come steaming to their rescue if they overplay their hand and Beijing calls their bluff.
The moral hazard of IMF intervention resulted in east Asia bleeding oceans of red ink. The moral hazard of well-intentioned but wrong-headed assurances of American military intervention in the Taiwan Straits will bleed oceans of something far more precious.
American military leaders who may be required to send Americans into combat are painfully aware of the implications of Lee Teng-hui's shenanigans. As Admiral Dennis Blair, America's top military commander in the Pacific testified before Congress, Taiwan was crapping in the "punch bowl" of US-China relations.
ROC President Lee Teng-hui watched with delight as the US Air Force served as the air wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The timing of Lee's "two nations" provocation was hardly coincidental, coming as it did on the heels of Nato's Chinese Embassy bombing fiasco. Lee interpreted the event as his cue to stoop over the punchbowl and take yet another dump.
Fifty-eight thousand Americans ordered to Vietnam by ungrateful civilian REMFs came home in bodybags. A black granite monument on the National Mall inscribed with their names serves as a solemn reminder of that tragic waste of American lives.
If our Beltway Bombardiers have failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam, as it appears they have, and pointlessly dispatch young Americans halfway around the world to intervene in a Chinese Civil War that is none of our business, how many will return in bodybags from the Taiwan Straits? After it is all over, win, lose or draw, what would they have died for?
Are American values what the Taiwan separatists hold sacred and expect American fighing men and women to die for? If that were the case, American intervention on the separatists' behalf might be slightly less absurd. But as we shall see, American values are not what the Taiwan independence movement is all about.
Ignore the scripted, feel-good speeches high-powered American PR firms like Cassidy and Associates have carefully coached Lee Teng-hui to spoonfeed our congress and mainstream media. Ignore especially his 1996 "Always in my Heart" class reunion speech at Cornell, where he really laid it on with a trowel.
Instead find someone fluent in Chinese or better yet, Japanese, to translate what Lee and other Taiwanese separatists have written for the consumption of separatist militants in Taiwan and neo-fascist fellow travellers in Japan. Americans may be shocked to discover the Taiwanese separatists' bottom line objection to eventual reunification with China has little to do with professed admiration for American concepts of individualism, liberty, republican government, and everything to do with nostalgia for authoritarian Japanese colonial rule.
Lee Teng-hui's book "Taiwan's Proposal," published shortly before his "two nations" declaration, is Lee's manifesto for Taiwan's future. It was ghost-written by an anonymous Japanese author from a right wing Japanese perspective. The first edition was in written in Japanese and printed in Japan. Only later was it translated into Chinese and printed in Taiwan. In it Lee praises Japanese culture as being incomparably superior to American culture. Lee boasts publicly that he is more thoroughly steeped in Japanese culture than even the average Japanese.
In case that went by too fast, let me repeat it. A manifesto by the President of the Republic of China, purporting to represent the interests of the people of Taiwan, is actually penned by a neofascist Japanese author in Japan, published in Japan, and only gets translated into Chinese afterwards?
Hello?
During a 1995 interview with visiting Japanese author Ryotaro Shiba, President Lee Teng-hui ordered his cabinet and bodyguards out of his office, and speaking in Japanese to a long lost countryman, gushed that he still considered himself Japanese until a young adult, wept when he heard Japan had surrended to the Allies and was returning Taiwan to China, and that his grief upon hearing Emperor Hirohito had died was more profound than that of Japanese in Japan. The conversation was ostensibly confidential, but Shiba, being a journalist first and Lee's confidant only in Lee's fevered imagination, promptly published their little tete a tete verbatim the minute he got back to Japan, where Japanese neo-fascists applauded it enthusiastically.
Far from being freedom fighters, Taiwanese "independence" leaders fell over each other to collaborate with Japanese colonial administrators for personal advantage.
Lee Teng-hui's father collaborated by serving as a deputy in the colonial Japanese police force, actively oppressing his own people. In return, his family received comfortable housing, quality rations, and educational opportunities. Lee Teng-hui himself attended the Universty of Kyoto, a singular "honor" doled out only to those deemed "politically reliable."
Lee's chief negotiator in cross-Straits negotiations with Beijing is crony capitalist Koo Chen-fu. An historian at Taiwan's Academia Sineca recently exposed Koo and the Koo family business empire as WWII era profiteers engaged in the selling of Taiwanese women into sexual slavery.
Younger Taiwan independence leaders born too late to have been collaborators routinely offer elaborate rationalizations for WWII era Japanese war crimes on local talk shows.
When China was refused an apology in writing from Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi for WWII war crimes, which included years of gang rape of Taiwanese "comfort women" and Joseph Mengele style Unit 731 "medical experiments" performed on American POWs in Manchuria, Lee Teng-hui huffily proclaimed that "Japan has apologized enough. Any further apologizing will only harm Japan's dignity!"
Just before Lee threw his"two nations" gauntlet at Beijing's feet, he told Taiwan's media he detected early storm clouds of "kamikaze" ("divine wind") gathering over the island of Taiwan. The media was baffled by his cryptic remark, but his intention soon became clear. Time is running out for Lee, just as it ran out for Japan's kamikaze squadrons approaching V-J Day. Lee is hoping his"two nations" proclamation will provoke war. As Dr Alex Kao, an expert on Chinese military strategy sees it, Lee is gambling that the mainland "will launch a premature war now which 15 years from now Taiwan would have no chance of winning."
Emotionally the Taiwan "independence" elite is dependent on their former colonial master, Japan, into whose arms they will fling themselves if their divorce from China becomes a reality. Taiwan "independence" is merely a way station en route their final destination, Tokyo. Even their proposed "Republic of Taiwan" flag is a fascimile of the Japanese Emperor's "Chrysanthemum Flag." Taiwan separatists would be jubilant if upon achieving "independence" they are promptly re-colonized by Japan.
Taiwan independence is a movement which if genuinely understood would evoke scant sympathy from Americans, certainly not from American POWs who survived the Bataan Death March, and the Taiwan independence leaders know it. So instead they recite the catechism they know patriotic Americans want to hear: Freedom, democracy, anti-communism.
In a sense we shouldn't blame the Taiwan "independence" parasites, who are really no different from sundry homegrown parasites. The parasites know perfectly well they're getting a free lunch at American taxpayers' expense, but as long as their generous Uncle Sammy insists on picking up the tab, they'd be crazy to pass up a free meal.
A few million in strategically distributed political contributions by the immensely wealthy Taiwan Lobby, and presto, highly trained military personnel and trillions in advanced weaponry belonging to the World's Only Remaining Superpower are placed at their disposal. Americans who enlisted in our armed forces on the understanding their duty was to defend American territory from foreign invaders find themselves job-shopped as mercenaries to would be founders of a would be "Republic of Taiwan." The Taiwan tail winds up wagging the American dog. The Taiwan mouse roars, and the proud American eagle crosses the Pacific to do the mouse's bidding.
A pretty shrewd bargain for the Taiwan "independence" movement. But what kind of a deal is it for Americans? We owe it to ourselves to consider long and hard whether Taiwan independence is something American taxpayers want to pay for with our sweat and American fighting men and women want to pay for with their blood.
What will happen to 22 million ordinary Taiwanese if America repeals the Taiwan Relations Act and informs the obdurate separatist Lee Teng-hui "You want independence? Lots of luck. You're on your own."
The answer is: Not a damned thing.
Instead the Taiwan independence movement's Japanophile elite will be forced to listen, for a change, to the 80% majority of Taiwan people who oppose Taiwan independence and are perfectly content with defacto autonomy. If they don't, the people will elect a more rational president, one who will drive a hard bargain and negotiate a high degree of regional autonomy under a "One Country, Two Systems" formula. Later, as the mainland liberalizes to a degree deemed satisfactory by Taiwan, the two sides will reunify peacefully along the lines of East and West Germany.
Both America and China will win. Heavily armed Taiwan will get an even better deal than Hongkong, which to the chagrin of China-haters has remained utterly unmolested since its restoration to China, despite being completely unarmed.
Only the Taiwanese separatist fanatics will lose. Without America's credit card on the dinner table they will have to stare at the prices on the menu before ordering. Without American carte blanche, Lee Teng-hui and his Taiwan "independence" elite will have to ask themselves whether their dream of becoming a satellite of Japan is worth risking their own miserable hides, rather than the lives of American servicemen and women.
But, as the libertarian battle cry coined by the late, great libertarian science fiction master Robert Heinlein goes, "Tanstaafl!" or "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!"
Wednesday, August 18, 1999
Gerald Segal, learn Chinese History before teaching It
Gerald Segal, learn Chinese History before teaching It
Bevin Chu
August 18, 1999
Letters Editor
Straits Times
Dear Sir/Madam,
Gerald Segal, in "Forgo blood politics or get left behind" asserts that "in the China-Taiwan dispute, the appeal from one side is that unity is imperative because of blood ties."
This will come as news to 1.2 billion pro-reunification Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits who demand eventual reunification not on the basis of "blood lines," but on the basis of territorial sovereignty.
China has never claimed, for example, that predominantly ethnic Chinese Singapore is part of China's territory. China recognizes that Chinese-Singaporeans emigrated to a foreign country. The same is true of Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Nor have ethnic Chinese in these foreign countries ever been anything but "model minorities." They have certainly never demanded anything resembling the Austrian "anschluss." China does maintain however, correctly, that Taiwan and predominantly Tibetan-Chinese Tibet are integral parts of a multiethnic China.
Segal suggests "societies that stick closely to blood and ethnicity will now lose out in the globalised competition for ideas and talent." I for one agree with this 100%. But what does this have to do with rejecting Taiwan independence?
Even the most technologically advanced "borderless" Information Age nations refuse to tolerate the loss of sovereign territory without a struggle. If Mr. Segal doubts this, let him loudly demand that the United States, the home of the internet, allow Alaska, Hawaii, and Texas, each with an independence movement, to secede, and brace himself for the furious outpouring from American patriots.
Mr. Segal would do well to learn a little Chinese history before presuming to lecture others about it. His entire article confirms that "those who are unaware of their ignorance, will only be misled by their knowledge."
Segal seems blissfully unaware that several millennia of what Ku Klux Klansmen and neo-Nazis denounce as "mongrelization of the races" is the reason modern China looks so ethnically homogenous, not outmoded German or Japanese "blood-based instincts of identity."
Jews who centuries ago emigrated to Kaifeng are so thoroughly assimilated they are indistinguishable from "native" Chinese. By contrast Jews in Europe and even America remain physically distinct due to incomplete assimilation.
Yet it is China which Segal, writing from white Anglo-Saxon Britain condemns, and the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, four white Anglo-Saxon dominated former British colonies still plagued with anti-Semitism, which Segal lavishes with praise!
Chinese traditionally did not even think of China as a "nation" but simply as "Tien Xia" ("Under Heaven"). The very term "China" is a western neologism. China's universalist vision merged Hans, Manchus, Mongols, Moslems, Tibetans and 51 other ethnic groups, each at one time independent warring foreign nations, into an integrated multiethnic China. Ancient China was the original borderless economy, limited only by the era's primitive transportation.
If Mr. Segal wants to denounce "blood politics" in China, let him denounce Tenzing Gyatso, aka the Dalai Lama, who rejects his identity as a Tibetan-Chinese and instead demands Tibetan racial purity along the lines of his Nazi mentor, SS Captain Heinrich Harrer.
Segal's obsession with "dividing and conquering" China, well known to those familiar with his scribblings, merely reveal his own "dangerous and increasingly antiquated" Kiplingesque way of seeing the Chinese not as fellow human beings, but as an insidious "Yellow Peril" to be nipped in the bud. And Mr. Segal wonders why "solutions are hard to find."
Sincerely,
Bevin Chu
Taipei, Taiwan, China
Appendix:
Observations on the history of Jews in China
by Ling-Chi Wang
Associate Professor Emeritus
Ethnic Studies Department, UC Berkeley
Jewish people have a history of about one thousand years in China, dating back to the 10th century and ending in early 20th century when they, excluding the newly arrived Jews in Harbin and Shanghai respectively in first two decades from Russia and from Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, disappeared completely due to their total absorption through generations of inter -marriages with the Chinese. Down the centuries, the religious, economic, and cultural center of Jews in China was at Kaifeng, Henan. Unfortunately, nothing is left of the Jewish community due to assimilation and frequent disastrous flooding in Kaifeng. No doubt religious and racial persecution reinforced Jewish identity and solidarity over time in virtually every country Jews settled into. In China, Jews encountered no such persecution and they eventually were absorbed by the Chinese. This is the Chinese exceptionalism for which all Chinese can justifiably be proud of. What we know of the Jewish community during the one thousand years in China comes mostly from written records in Chinese and some bits and pieces of Jewish documents in Chinese, Hebrew, and Aramaic seen through old photographs.
Several years ago, the S.F. Jewish Museum borrowed an exhibit on the History of Jews in China from the Ha'aretz Museum in Israel. I had the honor of being the keynote speaker at the official opening of the exhibit, not so much because of my knowledge of Jews in China which was scanty and thin at best, but of my academic interests in Old Testament studies and the intellectual history of Jewish sages. It was quite an experience for a Chinese American to address a standing-room only Jewish audience.
Incidentally, a team of Jewish documentary film makers is now making a film on the history of Jews in San Francisco and I am helping the team understand the Chinese experience in S.F. and the relations between Jews and Chinese in the city, which had their ups and downs, as you can well imagine. Levi-Strauss, as you know, was founded during the Gold Rush by a Jew by that name and became famous for making the blue denim jeans. Like all garment manufacturing companies, it hired Chinese, hundreds of them in 1870s in order to compete with garments imported from East coast factories. Under pressure from the Workingmen's Party, it lay-off all Chinese except one. The one was retained because his skill was needed in the plant. Also, Rep. Julius Kahn was among the politicians who wrote the Chinese exclusion law enacted by Congress in 1902 which extended and expanded on the already punitive Geary Act of 1892, by including the exclusion of Chinese from the newly colonized Philippines and Hawaii and a narrowly defined exempt class of Chinese eligible to come to the U.S. as visitors. Unlike the east and midwest, Jews in the west coast experienced less intense anti-Semitism and were given opportunities to succeed and excel. The price of their success was joining the white racists in the oppression of Chinese.
Appendix:
Comments on America's Chinese Exclusion Law
by Edward Liu
Attorney at Law
San Francisco, California
My late father, Liu Chi Tien, was one of many adversely impacted by America's Chinese Exclusion Law, which was extended and applied to the Philippines after the U.S. annexed the islands in 1898, as spoils of the Spanish-American War.
The "yellow journalism" of Randolph Hearst incited public hysteria over the sinking of the USS Maine. It unleashed a public clamor for McKinley to declare war against Spain over the sinking in a Cuban harbor, then a Spanish colony.
When America declared war on Spain in 1898, Spain was seriously weakened and a failing colonial power.
America and Americans, the "Johnny Come Lately" to the game of Western Imperialism and Colonialism, suddenly became obsessed with selling "oil for the lamps of China."
The Philippines was then Spain's colony. When the war was won, Spain was vanquished and compelled to cede the Philippines to America, McKinley did not know what to do with America's new role as a colonizer the Philippine colony and Cuban colony.
The historical literature are full of stories about how the American government looked at the Philippines and Filipinos as "savages."
The pacification of the Philippines, by American troops, after the Filipino indigenous rebel patriots, led by a peasant Andres Bonifacio, was one of the most atrocious and brutal.
Americans are amnesic when it comes to their racism, brutalities, and atrocities committed against colored people in their colonial history and imperialist history.
My father, born in the Chinese village in Taishan, of an ethnic Chinese overseas father, named Lao Shing, was a child born when my overseas paternal grandfather went back on one of his trips from the Philippines back to his native village.
In 1905, when my father was born, the village had become a U.S. colony, and the Chinese Exclusion Law was already in force and extended to the Philippines, my father, even though born to a Philippines Chinese called Lao Shing, was barred from immigrating to join my grandfather.
Guess how my grandfather circumvented the Chinese Exclusion Act applied t the Philippines?
Ingenious!
Just like the Chinese in San Francisco, my father went in as a "paper son." A member of the Loong Kong Family Association, for all surnamed Liu (Lao), Kwan (Guan), Cheung (Chang), Chiu (Zhao) had a Philippine-born son who died. His name was Chong Hin.
My grandfather took his birth certificate, then called a Filipino cedula, went back to China, and claimed that my father was born in the Philippines, as "Chong Hin", as the son of a Loong Kong Family Association member.
For many years, my father, although surnamed Liu or Lau (in Cantonese) was using the name Chong Hin in his papers.
It mystified me. It was only later that I learned that he was a "paper son."
Representative Julius Kahn then and Senator Charles Schumer now embody this very racism and "yellow peril" paranoia.
But for that, my father would not have had such a difficult time joining his own birth father in the Philippines.
This aspect of the "dark side" of Jewish history, apart from the good side, needs to be underscored.
There are good Jews and there are bad Jews.
Rep. Julius Kahn was an [expletive deleted].
Bevin Chu
August 18, 1999
Letters Editor
Straits Times
Dear Sir/Madam,
Gerald Segal, in "Forgo blood politics or get left behind" asserts that "in the China-Taiwan dispute, the appeal from one side is that unity is imperative because of blood ties."
This will come as news to 1.2 billion pro-reunification Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits who demand eventual reunification not on the basis of "blood lines," but on the basis of territorial sovereignty.
China has never claimed, for example, that predominantly ethnic Chinese Singapore is part of China's territory. China recognizes that Chinese-Singaporeans emigrated to a foreign country. The same is true of Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Nor have ethnic Chinese in these foreign countries ever been anything but "model minorities." They have certainly never demanded anything resembling the Austrian "anschluss." China does maintain however, correctly, that Taiwan and predominantly Tibetan-Chinese Tibet are integral parts of a multiethnic China.
Segal suggests "societies that stick closely to blood and ethnicity will now lose out in the globalised competition for ideas and talent." I for one agree with this 100%. But what does this have to do with rejecting Taiwan independence?
Even the most technologically advanced "borderless" Information Age nations refuse to tolerate the loss of sovereign territory without a struggle. If Mr. Segal doubts this, let him loudly demand that the United States, the home of the internet, allow Alaska, Hawaii, and Texas, each with an independence movement, to secede, and brace himself for the furious outpouring from American patriots.
Mr. Segal would do well to learn a little Chinese history before presuming to lecture others about it. His entire article confirms that "those who are unaware of their ignorance, will only be misled by their knowledge."
Segal seems blissfully unaware that several millennia of what Ku Klux Klansmen and neo-Nazis denounce as "mongrelization of the races" is the reason modern China looks so ethnically homogenous, not outmoded German or Japanese "blood-based instincts of identity."
Jews who centuries ago emigrated to Kaifeng are so thoroughly assimilated they are indistinguishable from "native" Chinese. By contrast Jews in Europe and even America remain physically distinct due to incomplete assimilation.
Yet it is China which Segal, writing from white Anglo-Saxon Britain condemns, and the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, four white Anglo-Saxon dominated former British colonies still plagued with anti-Semitism, which Segal lavishes with praise!
Chinese traditionally did not even think of China as a "nation" but simply as "Tien Xia" ("Under Heaven"). The very term "China" is a western neologism. China's universalist vision merged Hans, Manchus, Mongols, Moslems, Tibetans and 51 other ethnic groups, each at one time independent warring foreign nations, into an integrated multiethnic China. Ancient China was the original borderless economy, limited only by the era's primitive transportation.
If Mr. Segal wants to denounce "blood politics" in China, let him denounce Tenzing Gyatso, aka the Dalai Lama, who rejects his identity as a Tibetan-Chinese and instead demands Tibetan racial purity along the lines of his Nazi mentor, SS Captain Heinrich Harrer.
Segal's obsession with "dividing and conquering" China, well known to those familiar with his scribblings, merely reveal his own "dangerous and increasingly antiquated" Kiplingesque way of seeing the Chinese not as fellow human beings, but as an insidious "Yellow Peril" to be nipped in the bud. And Mr. Segal wonders why "solutions are hard to find."
Sincerely,
Bevin Chu
Taipei, Taiwan, China
Appendix:
Observations on the history of Jews in China
by Ling-Chi Wang
Associate Professor Emeritus
Ethnic Studies Department, UC Berkeley
Jewish people have a history of about one thousand years in China, dating back to the 10th century and ending in early 20th century when they, excluding the newly arrived Jews in Harbin and Shanghai respectively in first two decades from Russia and from Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, disappeared completely due to their total absorption through generations of inter -marriages with the Chinese. Down the centuries, the religious, economic, and cultural center of Jews in China was at Kaifeng, Henan. Unfortunately, nothing is left of the Jewish community due to assimilation and frequent disastrous flooding in Kaifeng. No doubt religious and racial persecution reinforced Jewish identity and solidarity over time in virtually every country Jews settled into. In China, Jews encountered no such persecution and they eventually were absorbed by the Chinese. This is the Chinese exceptionalism for which all Chinese can justifiably be proud of. What we know of the Jewish community during the one thousand years in China comes mostly from written records in Chinese and some bits and pieces of Jewish documents in Chinese, Hebrew, and Aramaic seen through old photographs.
Several years ago, the S.F. Jewish Museum borrowed an exhibit on the History of Jews in China from the Ha'aretz Museum in Israel. I had the honor of being the keynote speaker at the official opening of the exhibit, not so much because of my knowledge of Jews in China which was scanty and thin at best, but of my academic interests in Old Testament studies and the intellectual history of Jewish sages. It was quite an experience for a Chinese American to address a standing-room only Jewish audience.
Incidentally, a team of Jewish documentary film makers is now making a film on the history of Jews in San Francisco and I am helping the team understand the Chinese experience in S.F. and the relations between Jews and Chinese in the city, which had their ups and downs, as you can well imagine. Levi-Strauss, as you know, was founded during the Gold Rush by a Jew by that name and became famous for making the blue denim jeans. Like all garment manufacturing companies, it hired Chinese, hundreds of them in 1870s in order to compete with garments imported from East coast factories. Under pressure from the Workingmen's Party, it lay-off all Chinese except one. The one was retained because his skill was needed in the plant. Also, Rep. Julius Kahn was among the politicians who wrote the Chinese exclusion law enacted by Congress in 1902 which extended and expanded on the already punitive Geary Act of 1892, by including the exclusion of Chinese from the newly colonized Philippines and Hawaii and a narrowly defined exempt class of Chinese eligible to come to the U.S. as visitors. Unlike the east and midwest, Jews in the west coast experienced less intense anti-Semitism and were given opportunities to succeed and excel. The price of their success was joining the white racists in the oppression of Chinese.
Appendix:
Comments on America's Chinese Exclusion Law
by Edward Liu
Attorney at Law
San Francisco, California
My late father, Liu Chi Tien, was one of many adversely impacted by America's Chinese Exclusion Law, which was extended and applied to the Philippines after the U.S. annexed the islands in 1898, as spoils of the Spanish-American War.
The "yellow journalism" of Randolph Hearst incited public hysteria over the sinking of the USS Maine. It unleashed a public clamor for McKinley to declare war against Spain over the sinking in a Cuban harbor, then a Spanish colony.
When America declared war on Spain in 1898, Spain was seriously weakened and a failing colonial power.
America and Americans, the "Johnny Come Lately" to the game of Western Imperialism and Colonialism, suddenly became obsessed with selling "oil for the lamps of China."
The Philippines was then Spain's colony. When the war was won, Spain was vanquished and compelled to cede the Philippines to America, McKinley did not know what to do with America's new role as a colonizer the Philippine colony and Cuban colony.
The historical literature are full of stories about how the American government looked at the Philippines and Filipinos as "savages."
The pacification of the Philippines, by American troops, after the Filipino indigenous rebel patriots, led by a peasant Andres Bonifacio, was one of the most atrocious and brutal.
Americans are amnesic when it comes to their racism, brutalities, and atrocities committed against colored people in their colonial history and imperialist history.
My father, born in the Chinese village in Taishan, of an ethnic Chinese overseas father, named Lao Shing, was a child born when my overseas paternal grandfather went back on one of his trips from the Philippines back to his native village.
In 1905, when my father was born, the village had become a U.S. colony, and the Chinese Exclusion Law was already in force and extended to the Philippines, my father, even though born to a Philippines Chinese called Lao Shing, was barred from immigrating to join my grandfather.
Guess how my grandfather circumvented the Chinese Exclusion Act applied t the Philippines?
Ingenious!
Just like the Chinese in San Francisco, my father went in as a "paper son." A member of the Loong Kong Family Association, for all surnamed Liu (Lao), Kwan (Guan), Cheung (Chang), Chiu (Zhao) had a Philippine-born son who died. His name was Chong Hin.
My grandfather took his birth certificate, then called a Filipino cedula, went back to China, and claimed that my father was born in the Philippines, as "Chong Hin", as the son of a Loong Kong Family Association member.
For many years, my father, although surnamed Liu or Lau (in Cantonese) was using the name Chong Hin in his papers.
It mystified me. It was only later that I learned that he was a "paper son."
Representative Julius Kahn then and Senator Charles Schumer now embody this very racism and "yellow peril" paranoia.
But for that, my father would not have had such a difficult time joining his own birth father in the Philippines.
This aspect of the "dark side" of Jewish history, apart from the good side, needs to be underscored.
There are good Jews and there are bad Jews.
Rep. Julius Kahn was an [expletive deleted].
Sunday, August 08, 1999
American Values in Dire Straits
American Values in Dire Straits
Bevin Chu
August 08, 1999
High anxiety in the Taiwan Straits following Republic of China President Lee Teng-hui's "two nations" challenge to the People's Republic of China raises the question: How should patriotic Americans respond to the Taipei-Beijing confrontation?
The answer is: Americans who revere our heritage of freedom and independence must have the courage to defy 1990's Political Correctness and uphold core American values -- by politely but firmly refusing to intervene.
As George Washington stated in his Farewell Address of 1796:
"The Great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations is in extending our comercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible... Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign World."
Condensing Washington's 18th century idioms into bumper sticker-ese:
"trade with either, side with neither."
Meanwhile, the Taiwan Relations Act, which should have gone the way of the Berlin Wall, is exactly the kind of pernicious "permanent Alliance" with a "portion of the foreign World" the Father of our Country urged us to steer clear of.
Washington was hardly alone. His resolute opposition to foreign intervention was shared by all the Founders, none of whom intended any exceptions to be made for Kosovo or Taiwan.
As James Madison put it:
"Indulging no passions which trespass on the rights or the repose of other nations... fulfilling their neutral obligations with... scrupulous impartiality... sincere neutrality toward belligerent nations... [excluding] foreign intrigues and foreign partialities..."
As Thomas Jefferson put it:
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with all nations -- entangling alliances with none... Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe."
And finally, as John Quincy Adams, author of the Monroe Doctrine put it:
"America... does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
Why exactly were the Founding Fathers so unanimously and unambiguously opposed to "proactively" exporting American values beyond our shores? Did they not want liberty to prevail all over the world, not just in America? What was their problem anyway? Were they too myopic or selfish, as the Nomenklatura of the New World Order seem to imply, to see the value of "making the world safe for democracy?"
The answer to all these questions is a resounding "No." The Founding Fathers were cultured cosmopolitans who devoutly hoped that liberty would triumph the world over. And no, their foreign policy prescriptions have not been rendered obsolete by jet travel and the internet, because their soundness was not predicated on specific technologies in fhe first place. Rather their strategic vision was grounded solidly in their grasp of fundamental human nature, which has evolved little since 1796, however we might wish otherwise.
The Founders, powdered wigs and all, were infinitely more "hip" than we give them credit for, and understood something our smug modern politicians do not. They understood that to yield to the powerful temptation to "do good" abroad carries an enormously expensive and hidden price tag: the loss of our own liberty at home.
They understood that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," that handing our Political Class the power it demands to impose "benevolent global hegemony" on the rest of the world empowers it to impose a malevolent domestic dictatorship on Americans at home.
They understood, as too many well-intentioned Americans today do not, that once we compromise the safeguards against domestic tyranny written into our own system of law, no matter how compelling the rationale, we will cease being the nation others once considered worth emulating. We would instead soon resemble the very nations we so confidently set out to "reform" and "enlighten."
Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan, like South Korea and West Germany, demonstrated capitalism's clear superiority to socialism. Democratic reformer Chiang Ching-kuo's Taiwan, which witnessed the repeal of martial law and the enfranchisment of "native" Taiwanese, demonstrated that economic reforms are the harbinger of political reforms. Lee Teng-hui's "New Taiwan" on the other hand, is proof positive that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
China's Founding Father Sun Yat-sen modelled Taiwan's constitution on our own American Constitution. Acutely aware of China's susceptibility to backsliding into defacto monarchy, Sun took the added precaution of dividing the ROC government into five, not three branches. Not that it did any good. Lee Teng-hui, whom Newsweek gullibly anointed "Mr. Democracy," merely nullified all constitutional constraints on his executive powers in four stages over nine years, including the power of impeachment, and now simply does whatever he damned well pleases.
When Lee Teng-hui decided the Taiwan Provincial Government had to go because its mere existence constituted prima facie evidence Taiwan was part of China, the National Assembly stood in his way. What did "Mr. Democracy" do? With the collusion of the separatist Democratic Progressive Party he ordered closed circuit TV cameras installed inside the National Assembly hall to record who voted "the wrong way." He ordered illegal wiretaps of recalcitrant assemblymen, even his own party's. He sicced Taiwan's IRS onto holdouts with guerrilla tax audits. He arranged for triad hoodlums to phone undecided assemblymen to inquire "Do you know where your children are?" He persuaded parents and kin of Assembly members to threaten to disown or shun them. Finally, as a capper, he nullified all village level elections. Thousands of popularly elected officials have since become Lee's presidential appointees.
Lee Teng-hui is an "elective monarch" who finances his personal dream of a "Republic of Taiwan" with hapless Taiwan taxpayers' dollars, even though the government's own surveys show that over 80% of the people oppose Taiwan independence. When Lee made his headline grabbing offer of US$300 million in foreign aid to Kosovo, whom did he consult? No one. Not even his cabinet, let alone the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's equivalent of our Congress. With the exception of Lee himself, all 22 million Chinese on Taiwan were taken completely by surprise.
All three major broadcast television stations on Taiwan are owned by Lee's KMT party machine, as are the two largest English language papers. Dissidents are relegated to cable TV or "pirate radio," where they survive only by practicing self-censorship. The acidly funny and popular "Dianfu Xinwen" ("Underground News"), a "McLaughlin Group" style panel show was recently forced off the air for making Lee look like a buffoon. .
The Founders adamantly opposed foreign entanglements even when they harbored no doubt whatsoever about the worthiness of sundry foreign lobbyists' causes. Try to imagine the vehemence of their opposition to so-called Taiwan "independence" when the Taiwan separatist leadership's commitment to America's republican ideals is more than just a little suspect?
Americans must summon up the backbone to resist the moral guilt-tripping of the Gauleiters of the New World Order. We must uphold Madison's wise and principled admonition to exclude "foreign intrigues and foreign partialities," by staying the hell out of the ongoing Chinese Civil War in the Taiwan Straits in 1999, just as China refrained from siding with either the Union or the Confederacy during the American Civil War in 1861.
As a first generation naturalized American I am all too aware that my patriotism is presumed suspect by many China-haters in Congress simply by virtue of my race and my national origin. Never mind that I am from Taiwan -- that didn't help Lee Wen-ho -- and that I currently live in Taiwan. Never mind that my parents also live in Taiwan. Never mind that like Joe Sobran and Jude Wanniski I was a Cold Warrior to the right of Richard Nixon. I know by advocating policies which may appear "soft on communism" red flags will go up in the fevered minds of China Threat theorists determined to "go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
I could keep my mouth shut and my head down. But genuine patriotism demands that Americans defend the ideals of our Founding Fathers, and speak up for what is authentically American, and not meekly acquiesce, like "good Germans" or "good Japanese" in the 1930's, to the mainstream consensus while our nation continues its downward slide into imperial decadence.
America, the "world's only remaining superpower," has troops stationed in 144 foreign nations around the globe. Today the sun never sets on the American Empire. Back home meanwhile, Posse Comitatus is a dead letter, and the smart weapons used against Saddam and Milosevic to "make the world safe for democracy" have been used to incinerate non-conformist parishioners of a rural Texas Protestant sect, including two dozen unarmed children. As John Quincy Adams warned, America has become "the dictatress of the world" but is "no longer... the ruler of her own spirit." Our Founding Fathers' worst fears have come true.
Americans must categorically reject any attempts by foreign lobbyists, fellow travellers, and domestic politicians in the service or on the payroll of either Taipei or Beijing to draw America into what Washington termed "controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns." We must do so without hesitation and without apology, because contrary to what is Politically Correct in 1999, unyeilding adherence to James Madison's "scrupulous impartiality" and "sincere neutrality" is the fullest and most genuine expression of enduring American values. It is late in the day, but not too late to save our republic.
Bevin Chu
August 08, 1999
High anxiety in the Taiwan Straits following Republic of China President Lee Teng-hui's "two nations" challenge to the People's Republic of China raises the question: How should patriotic Americans respond to the Taipei-Beijing confrontation?
The answer is: Americans who revere our heritage of freedom and independence must have the courage to defy 1990's Political Correctness and uphold core American values -- by politely but firmly refusing to intervene.
As George Washington stated in his Farewell Address of 1796:
"The Great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations is in extending our comercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible... Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign World."
Condensing Washington's 18th century idioms into bumper sticker-ese:
"trade with either, side with neither."
Meanwhile, the Taiwan Relations Act, which should have gone the way of the Berlin Wall, is exactly the kind of pernicious "permanent Alliance" with a "portion of the foreign World" the Father of our Country urged us to steer clear of.
Washington was hardly alone. His resolute opposition to foreign intervention was shared by all the Founders, none of whom intended any exceptions to be made for Kosovo or Taiwan.
As James Madison put it:
"Indulging no passions which trespass on the rights or the repose of other nations... fulfilling their neutral obligations with... scrupulous impartiality... sincere neutrality toward belligerent nations... [excluding] foreign intrigues and foreign partialities..."
As Thomas Jefferson put it:
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with all nations -- entangling alliances with none... Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe."
And finally, as John Quincy Adams, author of the Monroe Doctrine put it:
"America... does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
Why exactly were the Founding Fathers so unanimously and unambiguously opposed to "proactively" exporting American values beyond our shores? Did they not want liberty to prevail all over the world, not just in America? What was their problem anyway? Were they too myopic or selfish, as the Nomenklatura of the New World Order seem to imply, to see the value of "making the world safe for democracy?"
The answer to all these questions is a resounding "No." The Founding Fathers were cultured cosmopolitans who devoutly hoped that liberty would triumph the world over. And no, their foreign policy prescriptions have not been rendered obsolete by jet travel and the internet, because their soundness was not predicated on specific technologies in fhe first place. Rather their strategic vision was grounded solidly in their grasp of fundamental human nature, which has evolved little since 1796, however we might wish otherwise.
The Founders, powdered wigs and all, were infinitely more "hip" than we give them credit for, and understood something our smug modern politicians do not. They understood that to yield to the powerful temptation to "do good" abroad carries an enormously expensive and hidden price tag: the loss of our own liberty at home.
They understood that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," that handing our Political Class the power it demands to impose "benevolent global hegemony" on the rest of the world empowers it to impose a malevolent domestic dictatorship on Americans at home.
They understood, as too many well-intentioned Americans today do not, that once we compromise the safeguards against domestic tyranny written into our own system of law, no matter how compelling the rationale, we will cease being the nation others once considered worth emulating. We would instead soon resemble the very nations we so confidently set out to "reform" and "enlighten."
Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan, like South Korea and West Germany, demonstrated capitalism's clear superiority to socialism. Democratic reformer Chiang Ching-kuo's Taiwan, which witnessed the repeal of martial law and the enfranchisment of "native" Taiwanese, demonstrated that economic reforms are the harbinger of political reforms. Lee Teng-hui's "New Taiwan" on the other hand, is proof positive that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
China's Founding Father Sun Yat-sen modelled Taiwan's constitution on our own American Constitution. Acutely aware of China's susceptibility to backsliding into defacto monarchy, Sun took the added precaution of dividing the ROC government into five, not three branches. Not that it did any good. Lee Teng-hui, whom Newsweek gullibly anointed "Mr. Democracy," merely nullified all constitutional constraints on his executive powers in four stages over nine years, including the power of impeachment, and now simply does whatever he damned well pleases.
When Lee Teng-hui decided the Taiwan Provincial Government had to go because its mere existence constituted prima facie evidence Taiwan was part of China, the National Assembly stood in his way. What did "Mr. Democracy" do? With the collusion of the separatist Democratic Progressive Party he ordered closed circuit TV cameras installed inside the National Assembly hall to record who voted "the wrong way." He ordered illegal wiretaps of recalcitrant assemblymen, even his own party's. He sicced Taiwan's IRS onto holdouts with guerrilla tax audits. He arranged for triad hoodlums to phone undecided assemblymen to inquire "Do you know where your children are?" He persuaded parents and kin of Assembly members to threaten to disown or shun them. Finally, as a capper, he nullified all village level elections. Thousands of popularly elected officials have since become Lee's presidential appointees.
Lee Teng-hui is an "elective monarch" who finances his personal dream of a "Republic of Taiwan" with hapless Taiwan taxpayers' dollars, even though the government's own surveys show that over 80% of the people oppose Taiwan independence. When Lee made his headline grabbing offer of US$300 million in foreign aid to Kosovo, whom did he consult? No one. Not even his cabinet, let alone the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's equivalent of our Congress. With the exception of Lee himself, all 22 million Chinese on Taiwan were taken completely by surprise.
All three major broadcast television stations on Taiwan are owned by Lee's KMT party machine, as are the two largest English language papers. Dissidents are relegated to cable TV or "pirate radio," where they survive only by practicing self-censorship. The acidly funny and popular "Dianfu Xinwen" ("Underground News"), a "McLaughlin Group" style panel show was recently forced off the air for making Lee look like a buffoon. .
The Founders adamantly opposed foreign entanglements even when they harbored no doubt whatsoever about the worthiness of sundry foreign lobbyists' causes. Try to imagine the vehemence of their opposition to so-called Taiwan "independence" when the Taiwan separatist leadership's commitment to America's republican ideals is more than just a little suspect?
Americans must summon up the backbone to resist the moral guilt-tripping of the Gauleiters of the New World Order. We must uphold Madison's wise and principled admonition to exclude "foreign intrigues and foreign partialities," by staying the hell out of the ongoing Chinese Civil War in the Taiwan Straits in 1999, just as China refrained from siding with either the Union or the Confederacy during the American Civil War in 1861.
As a first generation naturalized American I am all too aware that my patriotism is presumed suspect by many China-haters in Congress simply by virtue of my race and my national origin. Never mind that I am from Taiwan -- that didn't help Lee Wen-ho -- and that I currently live in Taiwan. Never mind that my parents also live in Taiwan. Never mind that like Joe Sobran and Jude Wanniski I was a Cold Warrior to the right of Richard Nixon. I know by advocating policies which may appear "soft on communism" red flags will go up in the fevered minds of China Threat theorists determined to "go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
I could keep my mouth shut and my head down. But genuine patriotism demands that Americans defend the ideals of our Founding Fathers, and speak up for what is authentically American, and not meekly acquiesce, like "good Germans" or "good Japanese" in the 1930's, to the mainstream consensus while our nation continues its downward slide into imperial decadence.
America, the "world's only remaining superpower," has troops stationed in 144 foreign nations around the globe. Today the sun never sets on the American Empire. Back home meanwhile, Posse Comitatus is a dead letter, and the smart weapons used against Saddam and Milosevic to "make the world safe for democracy" have been used to incinerate non-conformist parishioners of a rural Texas Protestant sect, including two dozen unarmed children. As John Quincy Adams warned, America has become "the dictatress of the world" but is "no longer... the ruler of her own spirit." Our Founding Fathers' worst fears have come true.
Americans must categorically reject any attempts by foreign lobbyists, fellow travellers, and domestic politicians in the service or on the payroll of either Taipei or Beijing to draw America into what Washington termed "controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns." We must do so without hesitation and without apology, because contrary to what is Politically Correct in 1999, unyeilding adherence to James Madison's "scrupulous impartiality" and "sincere neutrality" is the fullest and most genuine expression of enduring American values. It is late in the day, but not too late to save our republic.
Wednesday, July 28, 1999
China to US: No Violence Against Confederacy
China to US: No Violence Against Confederacy
Originally posted at Chinese Community Forum (CCF)
Bevin Chu
July 28, 1999
July 16, 1860 PEKING (Routers) - China, drawing its own "line in the sand" on the latest East American crisis, warned the U.S. Thursday it would not tolerate a violent solution to the future of the Confederacy.
``We would consider any effort to determine the future of the Confederacy by other than peaceful means as a threat to the peace and security of the Western Atlantic area and of grave concern to China,'' a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said. ''That's about as strong a statement as one can make.''
The Chinese government's spokesman told a news briefing China believed the problem should be resolved through peaceful means and ``strongly opposed'' any other course of action.
China's Confederate Relations Act, which governs ties between Beijing and Richmond, commits China to ''appropriate action'' in response to threats to the Confederacy.
After the Union threatened the Confederacy, China gave an indication of how that commitment might be interpreted when it sent two groups of warships to America's eastern seaboard. The incident very nearly resulted in military action.
China issued the statement after the U.S. dusted off its threat to retake the Confederacy by force if the South moved toward independence. The South sparked the latest North-South crisis by declaring earlier this week it was abandoning the ``One America'' policy --the foundation of American federalism for decades.
Although China urged both sides to halt the ferment and restore a dialogue, China's Foreign Minister made clear Beijing felt it necessary to respond directly to the U.S.'s volatile rhetoric over the Confederacy.
Chinese military ships have been dispatched to the Atlantic Coast to deal with any tense situations as a result of Richmond's declaration, China's Minister of Defense told reporters.
Richmond has many supporters in China and China has long been under pressure to be more receptive to ideas about Southern secession. Beijing's first reaction this week was to try to contain the controversy by reaffirming it recognized one America ruled from Washington despite Richmond's decision to reject that policy.
The Confederacy's supporters in China backed Confederate President Jefferson Davis for ``stating the obvious'' and said ``America is a divided nation made up of two separate and sovereign states''.
A pro-Confederate sympathizer expressed dismay that the Chinese government, in affirming its one-America policy, sided with America's northern Republicans instead of Democrats in the South. He pressed for a reiteration ``of our legal defense obligations to the Confederacy.''
Washington, which considers the South a rebel force blocking its drive to reunify America, has threatened to invade the South if independence is declared. Government experts have predicted China likely would be drawn into any war between the Union and the Confederacy.
Earlier Stories
China Warns U.S. Not To Use Violence Against Confederacy (July 15)
China Warns U.S. On Confederacy (July 15)
Copyright (c) 1860 Routers Limited. All rights reserved.
Originally posted at Chinese Community Forum (CCF)
Bevin Chu
July 28, 1999
July 16, 1860 PEKING (Routers) - China, drawing its own "line in the sand" on the latest East American crisis, warned the U.S. Thursday it would not tolerate a violent solution to the future of the Confederacy.
``We would consider any effort to determine the future of the Confederacy by other than peaceful means as a threat to the peace and security of the Western Atlantic area and of grave concern to China,'' a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said. ''That's about as strong a statement as one can make.''
The Chinese government's spokesman told a news briefing China believed the problem should be resolved through peaceful means and ``strongly opposed'' any other course of action.
China's Confederate Relations Act, which governs ties between Beijing and Richmond, commits China to ''appropriate action'' in response to threats to the Confederacy.
After the Union threatened the Confederacy, China gave an indication of how that commitment might be interpreted when it sent two groups of warships to America's eastern seaboard. The incident very nearly resulted in military action.
China issued the statement after the U.S. dusted off its threat to retake the Confederacy by force if the South moved toward independence. The South sparked the latest North-South crisis by declaring earlier this week it was abandoning the ``One America'' policy --the foundation of American federalism for decades.
Although China urged both sides to halt the ferment and restore a dialogue, China's Foreign Minister made clear Beijing felt it necessary to respond directly to the U.S.'s volatile rhetoric over the Confederacy.
Chinese military ships have been dispatched to the Atlantic Coast to deal with any tense situations as a result of Richmond's declaration, China's Minister of Defense told reporters.
Richmond has many supporters in China and China has long been under pressure to be more receptive to ideas about Southern secession. Beijing's first reaction this week was to try to contain the controversy by reaffirming it recognized one America ruled from Washington despite Richmond's decision to reject that policy.
The Confederacy's supporters in China backed Confederate President Jefferson Davis for ``stating the obvious'' and said ``America is a divided nation made up of two separate and sovereign states''.
A pro-Confederate sympathizer expressed dismay that the Chinese government, in affirming its one-America policy, sided with America's northern Republicans instead of Democrats in the South. He pressed for a reiteration ``of our legal defense obligations to the Confederacy.''
Washington, which considers the South a rebel force blocking its drive to reunify America, has threatened to invade the South if independence is declared. Government experts have predicted China likely would be drawn into any war between the Union and the Confederacy.
Earlier Stories
China Warns U.S. Not To Use Violence Against Confederacy (July 15)
China Warns U.S. On Confederacy (July 15)
Copyright (c) 1860 Routers Limited. All rights reserved.
Friday, July 09, 1999
The New Party March for Peace Declaration
The New Party March for Peace Declaration
On July 9th, 1999, President Lee Teng-hui proclaimed that 'the two sides of the Taiwan Strait represent a "special state to state relationship."' The manner in which he made this proclamation and the locale chosen deserve critical scrutiny.
Lee's proclamation was a reckless gamble whose outcome remains to be seen. At stake with Lee's casual throw of the dice are the lives of 22 million Chinese on Taiwan. This sort of irresponsible, myopic handling of affairs of state as if they were children's games, has pushed Taiwan to the brink of war. The New Party calls on all Chinese citizens who desire peace and oppose war to take to the streets and voice our opposition to Lee's "two states" formulation.
The New Party 'March for Peace' declares that:
1. President Lee's so-called "special state to state relationship" has absolutely nothing in common with the "two Germanys" or "two Koreas" model. His formulation is deliberately worded in order to deceive the public. The "two Koreas" both claim sovereignty over all of Korea. The "West German Basic Law" central to the "two Germanys" formulation clearly stipulated that it applied to all German citizens, and that the West German government's Office for East German Affairs was subsumed under West Germany's Department of the Interior. Therefore within the framework of the Korean and German models each side enjoys a bona fide "special" relationship and connection to the other. President Lee's "special state to state relationship" formulation on the other hand, bears no resemblance whatsoever to the "two Germans" or "two Koreas" models. The defining characteristic of Lee's "special state to state relationship" is its conspicuous lack of specialness. It is nothing more than the relationship between two foreign nations.
2. President Lee's "two states" formulation constitutes a grave violation of the Republic of China's Constitution and law. Although the Republic of China's administrative jurisdiction does not currently encompass the Chinese mainland, according to the Constitution of the Republic of China, the ROC retains sovereignty over the Chinese mainland. Yet President Lee dared to assert that "As of 1991 the Republic of China's territorial sovereignty was confined to Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu," implying that the ROC's sovereignty had been reduced to the Taiwan region alone. This proposition violates Article Four of the ROC Constitution, which stipulates that "The ROC's territory and preexisting boundaries shall not be altered without the approval of the National Assembly." It violates the ROC's "indivisible territory" clause. It violates the "Article on BI-coastal Civil Relations." It violates the "territory may not be divided" provision of the National Security Act. It violates the Eighth National Unification Committee's ruling that '"One China" shall be defined as the Republic of China as established in 1912, whose territorial sovereignty encompasses the entire mainland, whose administrative jurisdiction encompasses Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu, and that Taiwan and the mainland are all part of China." It even violates the administration's own "one separately administered China" policy. It is an attempt to substitute the real Republic of China with a de facto "Republic of Taiwan" via semantic sleight-of-hand. It is in essence a monumental hoax foisted on an unsuspecting public.
3. The New Party vehemently opposes Beijing exploiting the turmoil precipitated by Lee's "two states" formulation to apply military force against Taiwan, and to trample over the Taiwan public's desire for political democracy and economic freedom. The New Party has consistently maintained that the reunification of both sides of the Taiwan Straits must be implemented peacefully, contingent upon the adoption of democratic rule and the establishment of economic parity. We resolutely oppose the use of military force against Chinese citizens on either side of the Straits. If Beijing liberalizes its politics and economy, this liberalization will draw both sides together and we will proceed down the path toward peaceful reunification. Beijing however must not make the mistake of adopting a superior attitude, slighting the Republic of China's equal stature, cramping the Republic of China's international "living space," inciting public unrest, resorting to military intimidation, thereby undermining the indispensible foundation of mutual trust and goodwill. The New Party hereby declares that the New Party and the Chinese people on Taiwan will resist any acts of military aggression against them with all their might.
Finally, The New Party puts forth the following demands:
1. The New Party hopes the Lee adminstration will see the light, clarify its position, and return to the "constructive ambiguity" of "one China, two viewpoints."
2. The New Party hopes Beijing will respect the Taiwan public's fundamental desire for political democracy and economic freedom, and refrain from exploiting populist sentiment or escalating cross Straits tension.
3. The New Party demands that the Lee administration cease and desist from sending propagandists abroad to promote the "two states" formulation.
4. The New Party resolutely opposes any attempts to pass constitutional amendments in an effort to "legitimize" the "two states" formulation.
5. The New Party urges President Lee to refrain from issuing any further inappropriate remarks or advancing any additional ill-conceived proposals prior to the expiration of his current, and final term.
On July 9th, 1999, President Lee Teng-hui proclaimed that 'the two sides of the Taiwan Strait represent a "special state to state relationship."' The manner in which he made this proclamation and the locale chosen deserve critical scrutiny.
Lee's proclamation was a reckless gamble whose outcome remains to be seen. At stake with Lee's casual throw of the dice are the lives of 22 million Chinese on Taiwan. This sort of irresponsible, myopic handling of affairs of state as if they were children's games, has pushed Taiwan to the brink of war. The New Party calls on all Chinese citizens who desire peace and oppose war to take to the streets and voice our opposition to Lee's "two states" formulation.
The New Party 'March for Peace' declares that:
1. President Lee's so-called "special state to state relationship" has absolutely nothing in common with the "two Germanys" or "two Koreas" model. His formulation is deliberately worded in order to deceive the public. The "two Koreas" both claim sovereignty over all of Korea. The "West German Basic Law" central to the "two Germanys" formulation clearly stipulated that it applied to all German citizens, and that the West German government's Office for East German Affairs was subsumed under West Germany's Department of the Interior. Therefore within the framework of the Korean and German models each side enjoys a bona fide "special" relationship and connection to the other. President Lee's "special state to state relationship" formulation on the other hand, bears no resemblance whatsoever to the "two Germans" or "two Koreas" models. The defining characteristic of Lee's "special state to state relationship" is its conspicuous lack of specialness. It is nothing more than the relationship between two foreign nations.
2. President Lee's "two states" formulation constitutes a grave violation of the Republic of China's Constitution and law. Although the Republic of China's administrative jurisdiction does not currently encompass the Chinese mainland, according to the Constitution of the Republic of China, the ROC retains sovereignty over the Chinese mainland. Yet President Lee dared to assert that "As of 1991 the Republic of China's territorial sovereignty was confined to Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu," implying that the ROC's sovereignty had been reduced to the Taiwan region alone. This proposition violates Article Four of the ROC Constitution, which stipulates that "The ROC's territory and preexisting boundaries shall not be altered without the approval of the National Assembly." It violates the ROC's "indivisible territory" clause. It violates the "Article on BI-coastal Civil Relations." It violates the "territory may not be divided" provision of the National Security Act. It violates the Eighth National Unification Committee's ruling that '"One China" shall be defined as the Republic of China as established in 1912, whose territorial sovereignty encompasses the entire mainland, whose administrative jurisdiction encompasses Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu, and that Taiwan and the mainland are all part of China." It even violates the administration's own "one separately administered China" policy. It is an attempt to substitute the real Republic of China with a de facto "Republic of Taiwan" via semantic sleight-of-hand. It is in essence a monumental hoax foisted on an unsuspecting public.
3. The New Party vehemently opposes Beijing exploiting the turmoil precipitated by Lee's "two states" formulation to apply military force against Taiwan, and to trample over the Taiwan public's desire for political democracy and economic freedom. The New Party has consistently maintained that the reunification of both sides of the Taiwan Straits must be implemented peacefully, contingent upon the adoption of democratic rule and the establishment of economic parity. We resolutely oppose the use of military force against Chinese citizens on either side of the Straits. If Beijing liberalizes its politics and economy, this liberalization will draw both sides together and we will proceed down the path toward peaceful reunification. Beijing however must not make the mistake of adopting a superior attitude, slighting the Republic of China's equal stature, cramping the Republic of China's international "living space," inciting public unrest, resorting to military intimidation, thereby undermining the indispensible foundation of mutual trust and goodwill. The New Party hereby declares that the New Party and the Chinese people on Taiwan will resist any acts of military aggression against them with all their might.
Finally, The New Party puts forth the following demands:
1. The New Party hopes the Lee adminstration will see the light, clarify its position, and return to the "constructive ambiguity" of "one China, two viewpoints."
2. The New Party hopes Beijing will respect the Taiwan public's fundamental desire for political democracy and economic freedom, and refrain from exploiting populist sentiment or escalating cross Straits tension.
3. The New Party demands that the Lee administration cease and desist from sending propagandists abroad to promote the "two states" formulation.
4. The New Party resolutely opposes any attempts to pass constitutional amendments in an effort to "legitimize" the "two states" formulation.
5. The New Party urges President Lee to refrain from issuing any further inappropriate remarks or advancing any additional ill-conceived proposals prior to the expiration of his current, and final term.
Wednesday, February 17, 1999
The Pot Calling the Kettle Black
The Pot Calling the Kettle Black
Originally posted at Chinese Community Forum (CCF)
Bevin Chu
February 17, 1999
The debate over Taiwan independence has gone off track. Permit me to re-focus on my original point. Namely, how the moral/ethical arguments invoked against China are never applied even-handedly against the China-bashers' own nations and governments. So please, no more cynical and futile efforts to guilt-trip Chinese who oppose Taiwan and Tibetan secession. China is actually on considerably firmer ground morally and ethically than the US when it comes to her territorial sovereignty. If the relentless and tiresome China critics in the US had enough integrity to apply exactly the same arguments against the US that they regularly apply to China, America's territory would have to shrink back to the original 13 colonies, smaller if truth be told.
Those knowledgeable about Chinese history know that China acquired most other territory when more powerful tribes such as Hunnish and Turkic tribes in the north-west, and later the Mongols and Manchus which were at the time alien conquered her, but subsequently intermarried with so-called "Han Chinese", thereby consolidating their territories. The term "Han" of course has never designated or been intended to designate a "pure" race, as the Han, so-called, were already of mixed ethnicity, and proudly so.
Mr. Walsh wants me to swallow the idea that today's US government doesn't selectively target and persecute those it perceives as dangerous or subversive. His astonishing assertion that political movements in the USA are not targeted for their views and function openly, without persecution, will come as a shock to anyone not living in Ozzie and Harriet Land. Mr. Walsh seems to be inhabiting a pre-Watergate "America can do no wrong" mental universe. Has Mr. Walsh never heard of the term "selective enforcement?" How about "DWB" (Driving while Black?) How about recently revealed FBI investigations into the sex life of the non-violent, committed pacifist civil rights leader Martin Luther King? King wasn't even advocating political secession, merely demanding equal rights under the law within a unified, integrated, colour-blind America. Sounds pretty tame to me. Imagine how J. Edgar Hoover would have dealt with him if he had been a Dalai Lama style head of an armed separatist revolt?
Has Mr. Walsh ever heard of the American Indian rights activist Leonard Peltier? Even after the Freedom of Information Act utterly discredited the evidence used in his conviction, and the Justice Department was forced to admit in his second appeal that it had no idea who killed the two FBI agents he was convicted of murdering, Peltier is still serving two life sentences. It can't happen in America, Mr. Walsh? The ugly reality is that Peltier is a political prisoner in a country that sanctimoniously champions political prisoners in other countries. As the ancient American expression goes, the pot is calling the kettle black.
Mr. Walsh pleads that he does "indeed accept the implications of the principle of self-determination in full." Does he really? I have watched with a mixture of amusement and exasperation as he tap-dances around the downside of the logical implications of genuine self-determination. Not just "self-determination" as defined to suit him, but when it impacts on America instead of China.
Mr. Walsh has a touching faith in "democracy." He seems to imagine that if an individual is outnumbered, then justice has been done, and the individual must lump it. After all, we voted on it, didn't we? But the self that has a right to self determination is not a group. Any group. The true self is the sovereign individual. Genuine self-determination is determination of every individual's fate by the individual himself. Not by any group he is supposed to belong to. Anything less is merely quibbling about whose arrangement for frustrating authentic self-determination is proper. This includes the unjust coercion of every sovereign individual by every "democratically elected" government on the planet. Yes, Mr. Walsh, even America!
When Mr. Walsh claims Americans have genuine liberty, he simply hasn't got a clue what he's talking about. Try seceding from the rule of the federal leviathan in Washington, Mr. Walsh. And watch them come down on you like a ton of bricks. I speak from personal knowledge. A former co-worker of mine in Los Angeles went to prison for just such an offence. I paid for some of his legal bills out of my own pocket. No, he did not commit any violent acts. He merely declared himself sovereign and independent in accordance with Common Law and Pro Se Law, dutifully filing all the necessary legal documents in a peaceful manner, declared that he was relinquishing all future claims on Social Security and other government benefits, and then refused to pay the taxes involved. He was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned in Club Fed for close to a year. No, we are not free in the "democratic" west, Mr. Walsh. We are only "free" if we go along with the crowd like sheep.
Mr. Walsh's flippant remark: "Mr. Chu defends the right of "all Chinese" to vote in a Taiwanese referendum and calls this democratic. Does he support the right of all humans to vote on this issue? How about all Asians who speak Chinese?" reveals his lack of seriousness. His remark that "The rational [sic] for allowing the citizens of the Republic of China to vote on its future, and to exclude those who don't live there is clear... Claiming that the proper geographical area is all of China is not convincingly more logical than the claim that Taiwan is the proper geographical area," reveal that Mr. Walsh is as uninformed about Taiwan's legal status as he is flip.
Did Mr. Walsh say "the proper geographical area?" Mr. Walsh seems to think I arbitrarily gerrymandered an improper geographical area when I included the mainland. I'm sorry to disappoint him, but I derived my proper geographical area from the Republic of China's Constitution. The Republic of China's Constitution defines the territory of the Republic of China as comprising the continental provinces and numerous offshore islands, including the island of Taiwan, Hainan island, Quemoy and Matsu. Let me assure Mr. Walsh I did not make up the ROC's Constitution. Notice I said Republic of China, not People's Republic of China. I am merely taking the Republic of China's Constitution seriously, at face value, even if others, most notably the Quisling Lee Teng-hui, don't. Isn't a Constitution supposed to mean what it says, Mr. Walsh? Or is it just a piece of paper?
Mr. Walsh would do well to read the ROC Constitution before inflicting his uninformed opinion on others. It is of course, written in Chinese. This is because the Chinese people living in the province of Taiwan are Chinese citizens. So they speak, read and write Chinese. I assume Mr. Walsh can read Chinese. Since Mr. Walsh professes such a deep and abiding respect for the laws of democratic governments, then why does he sweep the ROC's Constitution, the ROC's most fundamental law, which explicitly defines the ROC's territorial boundaries as including the Chinese mainland under the rug? Is it simple ignorance? Is it unfair to conclude that the real answer is that it doesn't serve his arbitrary, subjective, ad hoc political purposes?
Mr. Walsh complains that the PRC doesn't permit the 1.2 billion Chinese who happen to have fallen, via the fortunes of China's ongoing Civil War, under their area of control, to vote at the polls. But when I suggest that the ROC ought to do things differently, being nominally democratic after all, setting a better moral example, he objects that that doesn't yield the end result he wants -- Taiwan secession. In short, he wants to rig the game in defiance of the Constitutions of both the ROC and PRC. We now have an ample demonstration of just how much he respects the Rule of Law.
A lot of peculiar and bogus reasoning has been run up the flagpole by TI'ers regarding Taiwan's geography. Taiwan is separated from the Chinese mainland by 100 miles of water. This to TI'ers makes it geographically "separate," therefore politically separate.
Who says?
Hainan island off the coast of Guangdong is separated from the mainland by water too. Is Hainan therefore not part of China by virtue of geography? Hawaii is separated from the Continental United States by approximately 2,000 miles of water. Twenty times the distance Taiwan is from mainland China. Is Hawaii on that basis therefore politically not part of America? Guam is so far from America it is actually closer to China than to America. Should Guam be part of China instead? I don't think so. Alaska, although situated on the continent of North America, is not even contiguous with the lower 48. It borders instead on Canada. Should it therefore be part of Canada and not the US? Japan is an archipelago comprised of a handful of large islands and numerous smaller islets. Should each of these be politically independent because they are separated from each other by ocean? The Philippines and Indonesia are each comprised of hundreds or even thousands of islands. Should each of these patches of land separated by ocean be accorded independence on this basis?
For that matter, many islands are politically divided. The eastern end of the island which contains Haiti also contains the Dominican Republic. The northern part of Borneo belongs to Malaysia, the southern part to Indonesia. Actually from a topological perspective the major continents are merely larger "islands." Is every continent automatically supposed to be a single nation?
The mere fact that the Chinese province of Taiwan is surrounded by water means nothing politically. There is no justification for drawing a line around it politically on that basis.
Unless one is prepared to apply these patently absurd justifications to every nation on the globe, then please refrain from applying them to China. Taiwan is part of China by history, tradition, language, culture, international law and any damned basis you care to mention. Let's have no more of this nonsense.
As it happens, the People's Republic of China agrees with the Republic of China that Taiwan is not a nation. Despite widespread semantic shorthand which refers to the Republic of China as "Taiwan," from an international law perspective there is no nation state in the world known as "Taiwan," just as legally speaking, there never were two political entities known as East Germany and West Germany.
There is of course a province known as Taiwan, but it is not a nation, it is merely one of two dozen provinces of the Republic of China -- or the People's Republic of China -- depending on which of the two rival Chinese political parties (the CCP and the KMT) one happens to support. The government which resides in Taipei and physically controls the island of Taiwan and portions of the mainland province of Fujian, is the Republic of China. The government which resides in Beijing, and controls the rest of the mainland is the People's Republic of China. Both regimes are part of a temporarily divided China. Just as the Union and Confederacy were temporarily divided during the American Civil War.
Even Lee Teng-hui (inadvertently) admitted recently that this PRC/ROC stalemate is part of a yet unresolved Chinese Civil War. Just as East and West Germany were once divided, and North and South Korea still are. Yes, the stand-off has lasted 50 years, while the American Civil War lasted only four. So what? Show me the statute of limitations on reunification. Germany was divided for almost as long. Korea is still divided. None of which is at all relevant. China is China. She has her own timetable. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese history knows China has been divided far longer than that, again and again and again in its 5000 year history.
Just as American citizens who live 2,000 miles off the California coast, in the offshore state of Hawaii, are Americans, so the 1.2 billion Chinese who happen to live a mere 100 miles on the other side of the Taiwan Straits, in Fujian and 22 other mainland provinces and 5 autonomous regions, are also legally citizens of the Republic of China. No more, but no less than the 21 million citizens of China who happened to be living on an offshore province and were thus by sheer dint of fate spared Chairman Mao's insanity.
That of course was then. This is now. Deng was not Mao. Jiang and Zhu are even less like Mao. Premier Zhu Rongji was a victim twice over of Mao's persecution of pro-free market reformers. Even many western journalists, who are often painfully slow on the uptake about developments in China are finally beginning to see the light. The latest issue of Newsweek for example has a surprisingly fair article describing the astonishing lack of constraints ordinary Chinese in post-Mao, post-Deng China experience in their daily lives, certainly compared to Mao's nightmarish era. The Cold War is over. Time to stop nursing old hatreds. Time for reconciliation and reunification. Time to get over the Cold War mindset and let go of the mental pictures of a "terrifying spectre of global communism" threatening "civilisation as we know it." Germany has already done it. Time for China to do the same.
Mr. Walsh says that the Union's forcible prevention of Southern Secession doesn't count. Because it happened in 1865. Well, who made up that rule? Mr. Walsh? Why should anyone else accept his timetable? What will he do if some one else disagrees? Use force? Let's look at Mr. Walsh's nonsensical logic for a minute. Suppose anti-secessionist forces prevent Taiwan independence next year, in Y2K. In 2130 AD a unified China will be able to look back and say exactly the same thing Mr. Walsh did. It doesn't count. It happened in 2000. Ancient history. Is Mr. Walsh's ad hoc excuse-making supposed to represent some sort of moral and intellectual integrity?
Actually this entire debate, both Mr. Walsh's arguments and mine, could be dismissed as mere intellectual masturbation. In the real world these matters are decided the way American Indian territorial sovereignty, Mexican territorial sovereignty, Hawaiian territorial sovereignty, Alaskan Inuit and Eskimo territorial sovereignty were decided. By the sheer military might and brute force of the US Cavalry. By Gatling guns mowing down the aboriginal peoples, until there were not enough left surviving to constitute a coherent pro-independence political force. This of course is the real reason American Indians cannot get their lands back. Is the ever more centralised federal leviathan in Washington prepared to undo any of these unjust territorial acquisitions? Are you kidding? We all know this. Why pretend? This holier-than-thou hypocrisy offends the rest of the world, Mr Walsh. People are not fools. Don't piss on their heads and tell them it's raining. They won't buy it. The bitter irony is that if China had actually committed the genocidal atrocities that America has, and the Dalai Lama and his Hollywood acolytes accuse her of, China would not be pestered with the separatist headaches she is experiencing today.
The just-ended ordeal by public humiliation of William Jefferson Clinton is an object lesson. Or should be. The Democrats were the ones who demanded the creation of the Office of the Independent Counsel during Watergate, when they wanted to get Nixon. They demanded its continuation during Iran-Contra to get Reagan. They demanded its further perpetuation to get Reagan's VP George Bush, for guilt by association. Finally it backfired and almost got their guy, so now of course, they want it abolished. Ideas have consequences, Mr. Walsh.
The Afghan Mujahadin "freedom fighters" funded and supplied with Stinger missiles by the CIA during the Cold War years, have miraculously metamorphosed, like Jekyll into Hyde, into the virulently anti-America Taliban threatening Jihad (holy war) against hapless American civilians today. Does anyone really know what political repercussions sleazy CIA support for the pro-Taiwan independence DPP and the Dalai Lama's reactionary theocrats in Tibet will reap some day?
Those self-appointed Global Policemen who would deliberately weaken China by Balkanising her territorially, invoking the insincere rhetoric of "self-determination," had better understand that the ideas they endorse today may contribute to the political disintegration of the World's Only Remaining Superpower tomorrow. So be careful what you wish for Mr. Walsh. You just might get it.
Originally posted at Chinese Community Forum (CCF)
Bevin Chu
February 17, 1999
The debate over Taiwan independence has gone off track. Permit me to re-focus on my original point. Namely, how the moral/ethical arguments invoked against China are never applied even-handedly against the China-bashers' own nations and governments. So please, no more cynical and futile efforts to guilt-trip Chinese who oppose Taiwan and Tibetan secession. China is actually on considerably firmer ground morally and ethically than the US when it comes to her territorial sovereignty. If the relentless and tiresome China critics in the US had enough integrity to apply exactly the same arguments against the US that they regularly apply to China, America's territory would have to shrink back to the original 13 colonies, smaller if truth be told.
Those knowledgeable about Chinese history know that China acquired most other territory when more powerful tribes such as Hunnish and Turkic tribes in the north-west, and later the Mongols and Manchus which were at the time alien conquered her, but subsequently intermarried with so-called "Han Chinese", thereby consolidating their territories. The term "Han" of course has never designated or been intended to designate a "pure" race, as the Han, so-called, were already of mixed ethnicity, and proudly so.
Mr. Walsh wants me to swallow the idea that today's US government doesn't selectively target and persecute those it perceives as dangerous or subversive. His astonishing assertion that political movements in the USA are not targeted for their views and function openly, without persecution, will come as a shock to anyone not living in Ozzie and Harriet Land. Mr. Walsh seems to be inhabiting a pre-Watergate "America can do no wrong" mental universe. Has Mr. Walsh never heard of the term "selective enforcement?" How about "DWB" (Driving while Black?) How about recently revealed FBI investigations into the sex life of the non-violent, committed pacifist civil rights leader Martin Luther King? King wasn't even advocating political secession, merely demanding equal rights under the law within a unified, integrated, colour-blind America. Sounds pretty tame to me. Imagine how J. Edgar Hoover would have dealt with him if he had been a Dalai Lama style head of an armed separatist revolt?
Has Mr. Walsh ever heard of the American Indian rights activist Leonard Peltier? Even after the Freedom of Information Act utterly discredited the evidence used in his conviction, and the Justice Department was forced to admit in his second appeal that it had no idea who killed the two FBI agents he was convicted of murdering, Peltier is still serving two life sentences. It can't happen in America, Mr. Walsh? The ugly reality is that Peltier is a political prisoner in a country that sanctimoniously champions political prisoners in other countries. As the ancient American expression goes, the pot is calling the kettle black.
Mr. Walsh pleads that he does "indeed accept the implications of the principle of self-determination in full." Does he really? I have watched with a mixture of amusement and exasperation as he tap-dances around the downside of the logical implications of genuine self-determination. Not just "self-determination" as defined to suit him, but when it impacts on America instead of China.
Mr. Walsh has a touching faith in "democracy." He seems to imagine that if an individual is outnumbered, then justice has been done, and the individual must lump it. After all, we voted on it, didn't we? But the self that has a right to self determination is not a group. Any group. The true self is the sovereign individual. Genuine self-determination is determination of every individual's fate by the individual himself. Not by any group he is supposed to belong to. Anything less is merely quibbling about whose arrangement for frustrating authentic self-determination is proper. This includes the unjust coercion of every sovereign individual by every "democratically elected" government on the planet. Yes, Mr. Walsh, even America!
When Mr. Walsh claims Americans have genuine liberty, he simply hasn't got a clue what he's talking about. Try seceding from the rule of the federal leviathan in Washington, Mr. Walsh. And watch them come down on you like a ton of bricks. I speak from personal knowledge. A former co-worker of mine in Los Angeles went to prison for just such an offence. I paid for some of his legal bills out of my own pocket. No, he did not commit any violent acts. He merely declared himself sovereign and independent in accordance with Common Law and Pro Se Law, dutifully filing all the necessary legal documents in a peaceful manner, declared that he was relinquishing all future claims on Social Security and other government benefits, and then refused to pay the taxes involved. He was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned in Club Fed for close to a year. No, we are not free in the "democratic" west, Mr. Walsh. We are only "free" if we go along with the crowd like sheep.
Mr. Walsh's flippant remark: "Mr. Chu defends the right of "all Chinese" to vote in a Taiwanese referendum and calls this democratic. Does he support the right of all humans to vote on this issue? How about all Asians who speak Chinese?" reveals his lack of seriousness. His remark that "The rational [sic] for allowing the citizens of the Republic of China to vote on its future, and to exclude those who don't live there is clear... Claiming that the proper geographical area is all of China is not convincingly more logical than the claim that Taiwan is the proper geographical area," reveal that Mr. Walsh is as uninformed about Taiwan's legal status as he is flip.
Did Mr. Walsh say "the proper geographical area?" Mr. Walsh seems to think I arbitrarily gerrymandered an improper geographical area when I included the mainland. I'm sorry to disappoint him, but I derived my proper geographical area from the Republic of China's Constitution. The Republic of China's Constitution defines the territory of the Republic of China as comprising the continental provinces and numerous offshore islands, including the island of Taiwan, Hainan island, Quemoy and Matsu. Let me assure Mr. Walsh I did not make up the ROC's Constitution. Notice I said Republic of China, not People's Republic of China. I am merely taking the Republic of China's Constitution seriously, at face value, even if others, most notably the Quisling Lee Teng-hui, don't. Isn't a Constitution supposed to mean what it says, Mr. Walsh? Or is it just a piece of paper?
Mr. Walsh would do well to read the ROC Constitution before inflicting his uninformed opinion on others. It is of course, written in Chinese. This is because the Chinese people living in the province of Taiwan are Chinese citizens. So they speak, read and write Chinese. I assume Mr. Walsh can read Chinese. Since Mr. Walsh professes such a deep and abiding respect for the laws of democratic governments, then why does he sweep the ROC's Constitution, the ROC's most fundamental law, which explicitly defines the ROC's territorial boundaries as including the Chinese mainland under the rug? Is it simple ignorance? Is it unfair to conclude that the real answer is that it doesn't serve his arbitrary, subjective, ad hoc political purposes?
Mr. Walsh complains that the PRC doesn't permit the 1.2 billion Chinese who happen to have fallen, via the fortunes of China's ongoing Civil War, under their area of control, to vote at the polls. But when I suggest that the ROC ought to do things differently, being nominally democratic after all, setting a better moral example, he objects that that doesn't yield the end result he wants -- Taiwan secession. In short, he wants to rig the game in defiance of the Constitutions of both the ROC and PRC. We now have an ample demonstration of just how much he respects the Rule of Law.
A lot of peculiar and bogus reasoning has been run up the flagpole by TI'ers regarding Taiwan's geography. Taiwan is separated from the Chinese mainland by 100 miles of water. This to TI'ers makes it geographically "separate," therefore politically separate.
Who says?
Hainan island off the coast of Guangdong is separated from the mainland by water too. Is Hainan therefore not part of China by virtue of geography? Hawaii is separated from the Continental United States by approximately 2,000 miles of water. Twenty times the distance Taiwan is from mainland China. Is Hawaii on that basis therefore politically not part of America? Guam is so far from America it is actually closer to China than to America. Should Guam be part of China instead? I don't think so. Alaska, although situated on the continent of North America, is not even contiguous with the lower 48. It borders instead on Canada. Should it therefore be part of Canada and not the US? Japan is an archipelago comprised of a handful of large islands and numerous smaller islets. Should each of these be politically independent because they are separated from each other by ocean? The Philippines and Indonesia are each comprised of hundreds or even thousands of islands. Should each of these patches of land separated by ocean be accorded independence on this basis?
For that matter, many islands are politically divided. The eastern end of the island which contains Haiti also contains the Dominican Republic. The northern part of Borneo belongs to Malaysia, the southern part to Indonesia. Actually from a topological perspective the major continents are merely larger "islands." Is every continent automatically supposed to be a single nation?
The mere fact that the Chinese province of Taiwan is surrounded by water means nothing politically. There is no justification for drawing a line around it politically on that basis.
Unless one is prepared to apply these patently absurd justifications to every nation on the globe, then please refrain from applying them to China. Taiwan is part of China by history, tradition, language, culture, international law and any damned basis you care to mention. Let's have no more of this nonsense.
As it happens, the People's Republic of China agrees with the Republic of China that Taiwan is not a nation. Despite widespread semantic shorthand which refers to the Republic of China as "Taiwan," from an international law perspective there is no nation state in the world known as "Taiwan," just as legally speaking, there never were two political entities known as East Germany and West Germany.
There is of course a province known as Taiwan, but it is not a nation, it is merely one of two dozen provinces of the Republic of China -- or the People's Republic of China -- depending on which of the two rival Chinese political parties (the CCP and the KMT) one happens to support. The government which resides in Taipei and physically controls the island of Taiwan and portions of the mainland province of Fujian, is the Republic of China. The government which resides in Beijing, and controls the rest of the mainland is the People's Republic of China. Both regimes are part of a temporarily divided China. Just as the Union and Confederacy were temporarily divided during the American Civil War.
Even Lee Teng-hui (inadvertently) admitted recently that this PRC/ROC stalemate is part of a yet unresolved Chinese Civil War. Just as East and West Germany were once divided, and North and South Korea still are. Yes, the stand-off has lasted 50 years, while the American Civil War lasted only four. So what? Show me the statute of limitations on reunification. Germany was divided for almost as long. Korea is still divided. None of which is at all relevant. China is China. She has her own timetable. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese history knows China has been divided far longer than that, again and again and again in its 5000 year history.
Just as American citizens who live 2,000 miles off the California coast, in the offshore state of Hawaii, are Americans, so the 1.2 billion Chinese who happen to live a mere 100 miles on the other side of the Taiwan Straits, in Fujian and 22 other mainland provinces and 5 autonomous regions, are also legally citizens of the Republic of China. No more, but no less than the 21 million citizens of China who happened to be living on an offshore province and were thus by sheer dint of fate spared Chairman Mao's insanity.
That of course was then. This is now. Deng was not Mao. Jiang and Zhu are even less like Mao. Premier Zhu Rongji was a victim twice over of Mao's persecution of pro-free market reformers. Even many western journalists, who are often painfully slow on the uptake about developments in China are finally beginning to see the light. The latest issue of Newsweek for example has a surprisingly fair article describing the astonishing lack of constraints ordinary Chinese in post-Mao, post-Deng China experience in their daily lives, certainly compared to Mao's nightmarish era. The Cold War is over. Time to stop nursing old hatreds. Time for reconciliation and reunification. Time to get over the Cold War mindset and let go of the mental pictures of a "terrifying spectre of global communism" threatening "civilisation as we know it." Germany has already done it. Time for China to do the same.
Mr. Walsh says that the Union's forcible prevention of Southern Secession doesn't count. Because it happened in 1865. Well, who made up that rule? Mr. Walsh? Why should anyone else accept his timetable? What will he do if some one else disagrees? Use force? Let's look at Mr. Walsh's nonsensical logic for a minute. Suppose anti-secessionist forces prevent Taiwan independence next year, in Y2K. In 2130 AD a unified China will be able to look back and say exactly the same thing Mr. Walsh did. It doesn't count. It happened in 2000. Ancient history. Is Mr. Walsh's ad hoc excuse-making supposed to represent some sort of moral and intellectual integrity?
Actually this entire debate, both Mr. Walsh's arguments and mine, could be dismissed as mere intellectual masturbation. In the real world these matters are decided the way American Indian territorial sovereignty, Mexican territorial sovereignty, Hawaiian territorial sovereignty, Alaskan Inuit and Eskimo territorial sovereignty were decided. By the sheer military might and brute force of the US Cavalry. By Gatling guns mowing down the aboriginal peoples, until there were not enough left surviving to constitute a coherent pro-independence political force. This of course is the real reason American Indians cannot get their lands back. Is the ever more centralised federal leviathan in Washington prepared to undo any of these unjust territorial acquisitions? Are you kidding? We all know this. Why pretend? This holier-than-thou hypocrisy offends the rest of the world, Mr Walsh. People are not fools. Don't piss on their heads and tell them it's raining. They won't buy it. The bitter irony is that if China had actually committed the genocidal atrocities that America has, and the Dalai Lama and his Hollywood acolytes accuse her of, China would not be pestered with the separatist headaches she is experiencing today.
The just-ended ordeal by public humiliation of William Jefferson Clinton is an object lesson. Or should be. The Democrats were the ones who demanded the creation of the Office of the Independent Counsel during Watergate, when they wanted to get Nixon. They demanded its continuation during Iran-Contra to get Reagan. They demanded its further perpetuation to get Reagan's VP George Bush, for guilt by association. Finally it backfired and almost got their guy, so now of course, they want it abolished. Ideas have consequences, Mr. Walsh.
The Afghan Mujahadin "freedom fighters" funded and supplied with Stinger missiles by the CIA during the Cold War years, have miraculously metamorphosed, like Jekyll into Hyde, into the virulently anti-America Taliban threatening Jihad (holy war) against hapless American civilians today. Does anyone really know what political repercussions sleazy CIA support for the pro-Taiwan independence DPP and the Dalai Lama's reactionary theocrats in Tibet will reap some day?
Those self-appointed Global Policemen who would deliberately weaken China by Balkanising her territorially, invoking the insincere rhetoric of "self-determination," had better understand that the ideas they endorse today may contribute to the political disintegration of the World's Only Remaining Superpower tomorrow. So be careful what you wish for Mr. Walsh. You just might get it.
Wednesday, February 03, 1999
Rebuttal to a Taiwan Independence Fellow Traveler
Rebuttal to a Taiwan Independence Fellow Traveler
Originally posted at Chinese Community Forum (CCF)
Bevin Chu
February 03, 1999
Mr. Walsh's rebuttal is rife with both factual errors and logical contradictions.
First, the factual errors.
Mr. Walsh alleged that "if the people of Quebec vote democratically for independence, they will be granted independence (the unanimous consent of the other provinces is not required)."
What can I say? Except Mr. Walsh is simply wrong.
Canada's Supreme Court ruled in August 1998 that Quebec's separatist government did not have the right to unilaterally declare the province independent.
"Secession of a province 'under the Constitution' could not be achieved unilaterally, that is, without principled negotiation with other participants in Confederation within the existing constitutional framework," the court said in a unanimous decision. "Negotiations would be necessary to address the interests of the federal government, of Quebec and the other provinces, and other participants, as well as the rights of all Canadians both within and outside Quebec... there are linguistic and cultural minorities, including aboriginal peoples, unevenly distributed across the country who look to the Constitution of Canada for the protection of their rights. The court has confirmed that any possible process of independence must proceed in a manner that respects shared values that include federalism, democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law, and respect for minorities," Chretien said in a statement. "In particular, it has found that the government of Quebec does not have the authority in Canadian law to effect independence unilaterally nor does it have such a right in international law."
Mr. Walsh wrote "What [Bevin Chu] says about ... independence movements in the USA is simply wrong... While it is true that the CCP is not alone in using force against democratic (i.e., non-violent) independence movements, all of the other governments that do so are dictatorships."
Dictatorships? Let me repeat what I wrote before. The United States chose to prosecute an appallingly bloody civil war rather than permit the Confederacy to secede. Mr. Walsh makes no mention of this in his "rebuttal. " Texas and Hawaii were both annexed illegally. The "purchase" of Alaska from Russia was receiving stolen goods. Modern day challenges to federal authority are systematically and ruthlessly suppressed by Federal law enforcement. And we haven't even gotten around to shameful history of genocide and illegal landgrabs from American Indians.
The Texas indendence radicals were probably guilty as hell of the offenses they were charged with. That does not alter the fact that the feds targeted Texas independence radicals not for writing bad checks, but for "plotting secession." No, the feds did not cite sedition or treason as the charge when they rounded them up. They invoked the criminal codes. China bashers, does this ring a bell? It should. The feds did exactly what Beijing does with pesky organizers of opposition political parties, they prosecute them not as subversives but as common criminals.
Now for the logical fallacies.
Mr. Walsh doubts that Taiwan secessionists would deny others in Taiwan the same right of self-determination. He has not witnessed TI legislators physically assault and injure dissenting lawmakers in the Legislative Yuan or thuggish TI taxi drivers attack hapless women passengers who failed to speak the Minnan dialect as "Tai jian" or "traitors to Taiwan." Does Mr. Walsh really believe these humorless fanatics will be content to passively watch the disintegration of their precious "Republic of Taiwan," without "doing something?"
Mr. Walsh defends the TI'ers. My prediction as "only a statement about how any government functions." In other words "Everybody does it. What's the big deal?" But Mr. Walsh contradicts himself. If indeed all governments use force to enforce their laws then how unsubstantiated is my assumption that TI'ers would deny others the right to secede as well?
Mr. Walsh wonders: "Can Mr. Chu really be supporting the principle that the majority cannot determine their own form of government? Mr. Chu doesn't acknowledge it openly, but his words clearly mean support for dictatorship of the few over the many."
Really? China is a nation state whose sovereign territory includes the mainland as well as the offshore islands of Taiwan and Hainan. Both the PRC and the ROC Constitutions agree on this. TI'ers are calling for a "national" referendum in which 1.2 billion fellow citizens outside the TI'ers' unilaterally defined boundary would be prohibited from participating. The TI'ers don't want majority rule. They want their version of majority rule. They want minority rule within an electoral district defined so that they constitute a majority. Perhaps Mr. Walsh can explain to CCF readers just exactly how this is democratic? Since I defend the right of all Chinese citizens to participate in any such referendum, I could argue that I am being much more democratic. The TI'ers, by arbitarily restricting participation in their referendum to only 21 million are being anti-democratic and exclusionary.
Let's not be politically naive. One can achieve a democratic majority on any issue under the sun, provided one gets to set the geographical boundaries of one's electoral district. If one can exclude in advance those who would vote against one's initiative or referendum, then the result is a foregone conclusion. This time-honored process is known as gerrymandering. Gerrymandered electoral districts have nothing to do with democracy. Mr. Walsh merely prefers TI gerrymandered boundaries to China's constitutionally defined (by both the PRC and ROC) national boundaries.
Mr. Walsh infers that "Mr. Chu implicitly acknowledges that a Taiwan secessionist government would have the support of the majority." Hardly. My article was a thought experiment which granted the TI'ers' a hypothetical majority merely to illustrate the invalidity of TI moral/ethical arguments. At no time did I imply that the TI'ers enjoyed a real world majority. In fact, the latest Gallup Poll reveals that the Taiwan public's patience with endless, shrill TI agitation is wearing thin. The DPP's setbacks during the recent Three in One Elections provoked internal bickering over dropping Taiwan independence from the DPP's official charter.
Mr. Walsh hurls the wild accusation that "Mr. Chu, implicitly, supports the right of the unelected government of the PRC to use force against the Chinese people." Mr. Walsh is conflating "government" with "nation." China is a nation. It has been in existence for five thousand years. The Taipei regime is a government. It has been in existence for 87 years. The Beijing regime is another government. It has been in existence for 50 years. Governments come and governments go. Nations, consisting of the land and the people, endure, hopefully. Opposition to national disintegration hardly constitutes endorsement of any particular ephemeral regime. When Hitler violated the cynically drafted Nazi-Soviet Pact and invaded Russia, patriotic Russians fought valiantly at Stalingrad, not for Stalin, whom many of them detested, but for Mother Russia.
The "right to self-determination" is a double-edged sword. If Mr. Walsh wishes to invoke it, he had better be prepared to accept its implications in full. He cannot restrict its application only to regimes he personally approves of. Otherwise he is merely arguing that what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. A principled defense of the right to self-determination would authorize ever smaller political entities to secede from whatever political entity they currently belong to, stopping only at the level of the individual citizen. This means, theoretically at least, every property owner on earth would be legally and morally entitled to hold a "national" referendum, with himself as the sole voter, declare his own private plot of land a sovereign republic, and refuse to pay taxes to the nation, the state or province, the city or county in which he (formerly) resided. Not surprisingly, no government on earth is willing do more than pay hypocritical lip service to the concept.
As a libertarian and borderline anarchist I assure Mr. Walsh I on the other hand, have no objection whatsoever to such a global scenario. If this were what secessionists the world over actually advocated, I would be ecstatic.
But this is not what they want. What they want are merely smaller -- but not freer -- tribalist collectives tailored to suit their personal ethnic prejudices. Woe to any genuine liberty loving individualists unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped in such "independent republics." They can look forward to being treated the way German Jews were treated by the Nazis, or the way ethnic Chinese-Indonesians are treated by rabid Indonesian bigots.
Parting Shot
March 17, 1999
Mr. Walsh alleges that my response "was... clever... but it avoids the question."
CCF readers know better. Actually Mr. Walsh himself knows better. My original piece stuck in his craw precisely because it was impolite enough to draw attention to the widespread hypocritical application of one standard for America and another standard for China. When it comes to demanding respect for "human rights" what was good enough for the American goose is apparently not good for the Chinese gander. Fair-minded readers understood perfectly well that was my original point.
Mr. Walsh gives it one final try when he states: "In Mr. Chu's opinion the PRC should use force to compel the people of the ROC to accept re-unification with the PRC if they refuse to do so voluntarily."
You mean like President Abraham Lincoln's opinion that the USA was right to use force to compel the people of the CSA to accept reunification with the USA when they refused to do so voluntarily, Mr. Walsh? You mean like "A house divided against itself cannot stand" Mr. Walsh?
The fact is that Mr. Walsh, when confronted with his (1) flagrant double-standards and (2) crude verbal sleights of hand, repeatedly pretended that nobody was alert enough to realize what he had done. CCF readers witnessed him do this with (1) huffy demands that China forswear the use of force to prevent national disintegration, even while he made excuses for the Union's refusal to let the South go its own way, merely because it happened before his private Statute of Limitations and (2) the substitution of "PRC" for "China," even after I took pains to remind him of the distinction between governments and countries. Did anyone miss the fact that his motive for conflating "PRC" and "China" was to milk the residue of Cold War paranoia for what it was worth?
Mr. Walsh consistently refused to deal with the issues honestly and frankly. I too, have nothing more to say to him. The old expression "playing a lute to a cow" pretty much sums up my experience with Mr. Walsh.
Originally posted at Chinese Community Forum (CCF)
Bevin Chu
February 03, 1999
Mr. Walsh's rebuttal is rife with both factual errors and logical contradictions.
First, the factual errors.
Mr. Walsh alleged that "if the people of Quebec vote democratically for independence, they will be granted independence (the unanimous consent of the other provinces is not required)."
What can I say? Except Mr. Walsh is simply wrong.
Canada's Supreme Court ruled in August 1998 that Quebec's separatist government did not have the right to unilaterally declare the province independent.
"Secession of a province 'under the Constitution' could not be achieved unilaterally, that is, without principled negotiation with other participants in Confederation within the existing constitutional framework," the court said in a unanimous decision. "Negotiations would be necessary to address the interests of the federal government, of Quebec and the other provinces, and other participants, as well as the rights of all Canadians both within and outside Quebec... there are linguistic and cultural minorities, including aboriginal peoples, unevenly distributed across the country who look to the Constitution of Canada for the protection of their rights. The court has confirmed that any possible process of independence must proceed in a manner that respects shared values that include federalism, democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law, and respect for minorities," Chretien said in a statement. "In particular, it has found that the government of Quebec does not have the authority in Canadian law to effect independence unilaterally nor does it have such a right in international law."
Mr. Walsh wrote "What [Bevin Chu] says about ... independence movements in the USA is simply wrong... While it is true that the CCP is not alone in using force against democratic (i.e., non-violent) independence movements, all of the other governments that do so are dictatorships."
Dictatorships? Let me repeat what I wrote before. The United States chose to prosecute an appallingly bloody civil war rather than permit the Confederacy to secede. Mr. Walsh makes no mention of this in his "rebuttal. " Texas and Hawaii were both annexed illegally. The "purchase" of Alaska from Russia was receiving stolen goods. Modern day challenges to federal authority are systematically and ruthlessly suppressed by Federal law enforcement. And we haven't even gotten around to shameful history of genocide and illegal landgrabs from American Indians.
The Texas indendence radicals were probably guilty as hell of the offenses they were charged with. That does not alter the fact that the feds targeted Texas independence radicals not for writing bad checks, but for "plotting secession." No, the feds did not cite sedition or treason as the charge when they rounded them up. They invoked the criminal codes. China bashers, does this ring a bell? It should. The feds did exactly what Beijing does with pesky organizers of opposition political parties, they prosecute them not as subversives but as common criminals.
Now for the logical fallacies.
Mr. Walsh doubts that Taiwan secessionists would deny others in Taiwan the same right of self-determination. He has not witnessed TI legislators physically assault and injure dissenting lawmakers in the Legislative Yuan or thuggish TI taxi drivers attack hapless women passengers who failed to speak the Minnan dialect as "Tai jian" or "traitors to Taiwan." Does Mr. Walsh really believe these humorless fanatics will be content to passively watch the disintegration of their precious "Republic of Taiwan," without "doing something?"
Mr. Walsh defends the TI'ers. My prediction as "only a statement about how any government functions." In other words "Everybody does it. What's the big deal?" But Mr. Walsh contradicts himself. If indeed all governments use force to enforce their laws then how unsubstantiated is my assumption that TI'ers would deny others the right to secede as well?
Mr. Walsh wonders: "Can Mr. Chu really be supporting the principle that the majority cannot determine their own form of government? Mr. Chu doesn't acknowledge it openly, but his words clearly mean support for dictatorship of the few over the many."
Really? China is a nation state whose sovereign territory includes the mainland as well as the offshore islands of Taiwan and Hainan. Both the PRC and the ROC Constitutions agree on this. TI'ers are calling for a "national" referendum in which 1.2 billion fellow citizens outside the TI'ers' unilaterally defined boundary would be prohibited from participating. The TI'ers don't want majority rule. They want their version of majority rule. They want minority rule within an electoral district defined so that they constitute a majority. Perhaps Mr. Walsh can explain to CCF readers just exactly how this is democratic? Since I defend the right of all Chinese citizens to participate in any such referendum, I could argue that I am being much more democratic. The TI'ers, by arbitarily restricting participation in their referendum to only 21 million are being anti-democratic and exclusionary.
Let's not be politically naive. One can achieve a democratic majority on any issue under the sun, provided one gets to set the geographical boundaries of one's electoral district. If one can exclude in advance those who would vote against one's initiative or referendum, then the result is a foregone conclusion. This time-honored process is known as gerrymandering. Gerrymandered electoral districts have nothing to do with democracy. Mr. Walsh merely prefers TI gerrymandered boundaries to China's constitutionally defined (by both the PRC and ROC) national boundaries.
Mr. Walsh infers that "Mr. Chu implicitly acknowledges that a Taiwan secessionist government would have the support of the majority." Hardly. My article was a thought experiment which granted the TI'ers' a hypothetical majority merely to illustrate the invalidity of TI moral/ethical arguments. At no time did I imply that the TI'ers enjoyed a real world majority. In fact, the latest Gallup Poll reveals that the Taiwan public's patience with endless, shrill TI agitation is wearing thin. The DPP's setbacks during the recent Three in One Elections provoked internal bickering over dropping Taiwan independence from the DPP's official charter.
Mr. Walsh hurls the wild accusation that "Mr. Chu, implicitly, supports the right of the unelected government of the PRC to use force against the Chinese people." Mr. Walsh is conflating "government" with "nation." China is a nation. It has been in existence for five thousand years. The Taipei regime is a government. It has been in existence for 87 years. The Beijing regime is another government. It has been in existence for 50 years. Governments come and governments go. Nations, consisting of the land and the people, endure, hopefully. Opposition to national disintegration hardly constitutes endorsement of any particular ephemeral regime. When Hitler violated the cynically drafted Nazi-Soviet Pact and invaded Russia, patriotic Russians fought valiantly at Stalingrad, not for Stalin, whom many of them detested, but for Mother Russia.
The "right to self-determination" is a double-edged sword. If Mr. Walsh wishes to invoke it, he had better be prepared to accept its implications in full. He cannot restrict its application only to regimes he personally approves of. Otherwise he is merely arguing that what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. A principled defense of the right to self-determination would authorize ever smaller political entities to secede from whatever political entity they currently belong to, stopping only at the level of the individual citizen. This means, theoretically at least, every property owner on earth would be legally and morally entitled to hold a "national" referendum, with himself as the sole voter, declare his own private plot of land a sovereign republic, and refuse to pay taxes to the nation, the state or province, the city or county in which he (formerly) resided. Not surprisingly, no government on earth is willing do more than pay hypocritical lip service to the concept.
As a libertarian and borderline anarchist I assure Mr. Walsh I on the other hand, have no objection whatsoever to such a global scenario. If this were what secessionists the world over actually advocated, I would be ecstatic.
But this is not what they want. What they want are merely smaller -- but not freer -- tribalist collectives tailored to suit their personal ethnic prejudices. Woe to any genuine liberty loving individualists unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped in such "independent republics." They can look forward to being treated the way German Jews were treated by the Nazis, or the way ethnic Chinese-Indonesians are treated by rabid Indonesian bigots.
Parting Shot
March 17, 1999
Mr. Walsh alleges that my response "was... clever... but it avoids the question."
CCF readers know better. Actually Mr. Walsh himself knows better. My original piece stuck in his craw precisely because it was impolite enough to draw attention to the widespread hypocritical application of one standard for America and another standard for China. When it comes to demanding respect for "human rights" what was good enough for the American goose is apparently not good for the Chinese gander. Fair-minded readers understood perfectly well that was my original point.
Mr. Walsh gives it one final try when he states: "In Mr. Chu's opinion the PRC should use force to compel the people of the ROC to accept re-unification with the PRC if they refuse to do so voluntarily."
You mean like President Abraham Lincoln's opinion that the USA was right to use force to compel the people of the CSA to accept reunification with the USA when they refused to do so voluntarily, Mr. Walsh? You mean like "A house divided against itself cannot stand" Mr. Walsh?
The fact is that Mr. Walsh, when confronted with his (1) flagrant double-standards and (2) crude verbal sleights of hand, repeatedly pretended that nobody was alert enough to realize what he had done. CCF readers witnessed him do this with (1) huffy demands that China forswear the use of force to prevent national disintegration, even while he made excuses for the Union's refusal to let the South go its own way, merely because it happened before his private Statute of Limitations and (2) the substitution of "PRC" for "China," even after I took pains to remind him of the distinction between governments and countries. Did anyone miss the fact that his motive for conflating "PRC" and "China" was to milk the residue of Cold War paranoia for what it was worth?
Mr. Walsh consistently refused to deal with the issues honestly and frankly. I too, have nothing more to say to him. The old expression "playing a lute to a cow" pretty much sums up my experience with Mr. Walsh.
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