Madman Ma Orders 12 Armed Taiwanese Ships To Violate Japanese Waters

Story at the Taipei Times.  The press in Taiwan is still mum though, on how much the irredentist president's gunboat diplomacy has cost the nation -- not only in precious taxpayer NT dollars, but in squandered international credibility as well.

One need not speculate what world reaction would have been had Ma instead dispatched 12 Taiwanese coast guard vessels into CHINESE waters.  So that a "civilian" fishing boat could attempt to raise the Republic of China flag on P.R.C. soil.  Because the answer is clear:  the world would have regarded it as an outrageously dangerous provocation.

A very REAL provocation, quite unlike any of the phony "provocations" the previous Chen administration was accused of.

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UPDATE:  Citing irrelevant history, Beijing's mouthpiece newspaper in Taiwan urges Japan to quietly give in to the divinely-ordained territorial encroachments of the KMT-Chinese Communist Party alliance. 

Saw THAT comin'...

UPDATE #2:  Japan's ambassador to China has reportedly informed the Chinese government that Beijing should "take the necessary measures to avoid a worsening of the situation."

Good for him.  I'm rooting for scrappy little Japan the way I used to for Taiwan.  (Before the KMT  surrendered body-and-soul to the Chinese Communist Empire, that is.)

 
(Hu Jintao & his "very special" KMT friend.  Image from Life Magazine.)

UPDATE #3:  Coming soon:  A Tiananmen Square near you.  Courtesy of Supreme Leader Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT Party.  Uppity Taiwanese, beware.

 

(Taiwanese victim of the Chinese Nationalist Party police-riot of 2008.  Image from the Taipei Times)

UPDATE #4:  Perhaps I was too hasty in dismissing the relevance of the history the China Post presented.  Because the Beijing - Taipei axis certainly seems busy manufacturing "incidents" and pretexts for war in 2010 the very same way Imperial Japan did in the 1930s...

Comments

[Richa]

The world knows that the PRC's most powerful financier is the USA.

Without Washington's solid support of Beijing Taiwan could have been a new Republic by now.

[The Foreigner]

Richa,

America's policy of is one of strategic ambiguity, not "solid support". It's a policy which is intended to paper over differences and keep the peace -- though it satisfies no one. (Moreover, Beijing's belligerence towards the U.S. belies the absurd notion that it's being "solidly supported".)

As for Western investment in China, that may indeed be one of the biggest blunders of the last 30 years.

But that goes doubly true of Taiwanese investment in China, which grew exponentially following the Tiananmen Massacre. That's like giving away the rope with which your countrymen will be latter be hanged.

(By way of comparison, in 2005 U.S. investment in China was $3.1 billion. Investment by Taiwanese investors on the other hand, was anywhere from $2.2 billion to a staggering $14.6 billion. It's hard to nail that number down, since many Red Fat Cats in Taiwan skirt their own country's capital-control laws by funnelling money into Communist China via the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands or Western Samoa.)

2005 Foreign Investment in China

At any rate, all of this is quite far off the topic of the post. So it really doesn't belong on this thread.

[Michael Turton]

Thanks for the inspiration. Great insight.

[The Foreigner]

Michael,

This blogging stuff's kinda fun.

Maybe I should do it more often!