I haven't posted in a while due to...well a number of things. It was Double-10 days on Monday here (10/10), which is Taiwan's National Holiday and celebrates the founding of the original Chinese Republic in 1912 by Sun Yat-sen after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, and so for the long weekend (a rare occurence here in Taiwan where many people still work six days a week) some friends and I went to check out some hot springs that my roommate Caitlin had been to a few weeks before. Since then I haven't felt too inspired, but thankfully that's at least somewhat changed.
Googling "Double ten day Taiwan" I came across this article written marking the holiday, "Taiwan: Double Tenth: A Time for Rededication to Freedom" with no stated author on the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization website at http://www.unpo.org/ news_detail.php?arg=50&par=3055. It points out how dramatically Taiwan has changed for the better over the last 20 years from a forty year long military dictatorship by first Chiang Kai-Shek and then his son Chiang Ching-kuo that lasted until 1987 to a multi-party democracy that is among the most free in Asia, if not the world. This contrasts sharply, of course, with mainland China that has been under the despotic, authoritarian rule of the Communist Party of China for the last 56 years. For those of you who have read my article (posted below) discussing this in relation to U.S. foreign policy this is fairly familiar, but it is well worth reading. Here's an excerpt.
According to Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2005 survey, Taiwan is one of the few countries in Asia that qualifies as ``free.’’ It shares that with two other nations, Japan and South Korea. Taiwan ranked Asia's most free with overall rating of 1.5 on a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 represents the freest.The same survey rates China ``not free,’’ at 6.5, only a half point away from sharing the world's worst rating with Sudan, North Korea and Myanmar.Here lies the greatest external threat to Taiwan's free and democratic way of life.The tyrants who ruthlessly oppress the Chinese and Tibetan people declare the Taiwanese their chattel and rant that they will stop at nothing to crush Taiwan's sovereignty.In March, the rubber-stamp Chinese parliament unanimously approved a so-called ``anti-secession law,’’ which claims that the Chinese Civil War is still on and will end only when the Taiwanese people, who, except for those forcefully conscripted, took no part in that war, are united with a society that does not share their appreciation of human rights, freedom and democracy.In their hypernationalistic rhetoric, Beijing officials have claimed that Taiwan poses the gravest danger to China's national security. The world can see through such hysterical raving.
Well I would hope so, but it's still the case that most countries in the world, my country of Canada included, would rather not stand up to defend Taiwan against its expansionist neighbour preferring to accept China's line about it being but a "renegade" province that must eventually be ruled again by the mainland in order to keep good relations with the butchers of Beijing. Sadly, with the general incompetence that has plagued U.S. actions in Iraq since the war began (primarily due to Rumsfeld's desire to "do it on the cheap" with 175,000 troops as opposed to the 300,000 plus that many generals were advocating) and the continuing morass that is at least partly the result of said incompetence in plain view for all to see, America's, being the country that has kept Taiwan free for 50 years, resolve to defend Taiwan were China to invade lacks the credibility it once had. China would still have to be insanely self-destructive to take such an action, but then who thought the "progressive" Deng Xiao-ping would countenance the slaughter of hundreds, possibly thousands of protestors in Tianenmen Square on June 4, 1989? (If you need a refresher on what exactly happened that very sad day, check out http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/tiananmen.html for an overview that also has some incredible pictures posted. For a very interesting read about the U.S.' view of the situation, see http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/; a declassified history from the U.S. National Security Archives) An event that should certainly not be forgotten.
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