PRC tries to reign in Taiwan

Ummmm, without the US friendship, Taiwan would exist as a separate entity outside of the PRC right now. They would been whacked down by the Commies in the 50's. It is precisely because of this US friendship that Taiwan is making any noise in this region. Without this friendship Taiwan wouldn't even be trying to make any noise. So to say that because the US' friendship that Taiwan hasn't done anything unstable in the region is laughable.

Also, in other news, when did the US really try to befriend China? Of course, one would bring up Nixon, who when to China went both were dealing with the Soviet threat.

Last time I checked the latest string of events all involved hurling something in the other direction. Oh, that and the US routinely spies on China. If that's what you define as friendship then... okayyyyy.

 

<a HREF="http://www.cnn.com/US/9905/25/cox.report.highlights/">Highlights of U.S. report on alleged China spying (1999)</a>

<a HREF="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/spy/spies/four.html">Four Chinese Espionage investigations</a>

 

The growing economic dependence of both countries doesn't seem to hint that they're enemies or neutral partners. Instability stifles economic growth.

Mango nailed the spying bit....

That friendship was in response to what was happening on the mainland at that time. Who wouldn't fear a government that had purges and death tolls in the 40 millions? That same government had an alliance of social and technological assistance with the Soviets. Of course, you can look back at that time with your careful selection of facts and cry foul over America's aliance with the ROC because you're much better off today. You can't claim that those deaths were necessary for your prosperity, instead you leave it out to make the KMT look worse.

The varied stances over your replies also share a blanket anti-Taiwan rhetoric that contradicts whatever "fair and balanced" views you think you hold:

For one thing, I doubt many non pro-CCP historians will call the KMT regime in Taiwan more brutal than the PRC in the 50s. The controlling PRC didn't face invasions into their civilian populace or a consuming civil war. Their disasters were self-inflicted.

Another thing, the mutual goal of uniting China by the CCP and KMT allowed a "Cold" stalemate for 40 years that eventually lead to bilateral talks towards real talks of unification. That stalemate was because America defended Taiwan and also because America didn't allow Taiwan to purchase or develop tactical offensive weapons. If the situation was as unstable as you're crying now, then China would've been locked in an arms race instead of letting their military hardware deteriorate in exchange for improving their economic infrastructure.

So instead, you're rattling against the government Taiwan has now. That government doesn't have the trappings in your first effusive reply of being "brutal and repressive". Instead, they're democratically elected, but now they're considered "noisy". You can't fault the Taiwanese when China was busy lobbing missles in order to deter voter turnout for its first real election. Yet, for all the successes of the "pro-independence" controlled government, they still haven't declared independence. Is that a laughable coincidence? Are you laughing right now? If I were a businessman in Taiwan or China, I'd be laughing every year to the bank, even during the Chen's Presidency.


Since you claim to be knowledgeable in the subject, selectively spouting facts to promote your biases is disingenous to a real debate and discussion. That omission is what makes your posts opinions...if you haven't realized that yet.

 

You are correct. I did use a biased source and I tried to cross reference several points from The Wikipedia Entry, a generally neutral source, and they matched. I accept that somewhere between a little bit to all of what I wrote may be incorrect, and thought my confidence in Wikipedia's ability to eventually settle on accurate truth is undoubted, it may not have fully run it's course in this case.

I further will agree that I am not a scholar on the subject. I took a single course on Chinese history and culture in college, most of which I've probably forgotten. In the last few years I've read several books and watched History Channel related shows, though almost all of it deals with the last 100 years.

On the other hand, I do understand that to varying degrees, the centralization, direction, and sometimes alteration of the truth, both in the Chinese educational system, and the Chinese press present people in China with information altered specifically to make your view conform to that which the government approves.

Though not as strict as it once was, it still wields ultimate influence. As a parody of the effects this has, one should look at North Korea, where people are taught that most women in South Korea are prostitutes with venereal diseases who are abused as slaves by Americans. Clearly I don't mean to imply the same degree of misinformation in the PRC, but all the information Chinese people have been fed most of their adult life has been filtered through one agenda.

Conversely, while I agree that "free press" situations often have equally, if not more nefarious purposes, the fact that they are diverse results in a nullification of much truth from falsehood, as chaff is separated from wheat.

A recent radio program from the BBC, for instance, on Kashgar. The story pointed out that the residents of Kashgar don't feel, for the most part, that they are Chinese, as the government would have you believe. People are still even afraid to say so in front of official government interpreters.

You can find a series of radio programs on the subjects of which I speak here. from the BBC. It has its own bias, of course, but that bias is free to open criticism from NGOs, officials, and other news groups. The particular story I mentioned above is from Thursday, March 10th.

I would think long and hard about whether the truth is really true if it has to be filtered through the government's lenses first. In spite of all of the many failings of western democracy, the unrestricted access to information (which is coming under attack in the US from media consolidation, BTW) is the most empowering.

 

BTW, I also think it is a shameful misrepresentation by the American press when they discuss "hawks in the People's Liberation Army who advocate invading Taiwan now" without placing it in context.

There are, similarly, "hawks in the US Department of Defense who advocate war with China now", but they hardly comprise even a legitimate minority.

I also think most of us in the US severely discount the anti-Japan factor which has accurately been portrayed by the Chinese posters here. I heard a radio program in which a South Korean spoke of the North Korean nuclear weapons issue as unimportant when taken in the context of a militarized Japan.

One final point: Of course the US spies on China and China spies on the United States. I'm sure the US spies on Canada and Canada on the US. This is, in the modern context, due diligence and any country which failed to do so would be failing their responsibility. Great Brittan and the US are part of the Echelon network which spies on cell phone traffic around the world, yet Great Brittan is part of European intelligence networks whose data they are obliged not to share with the US!

In the same context, the US is constantly preparing military plans for war with every nation in the world, just in case and the number of military spy satellites every country uses on supposed allies and foes alike is mind boggling. Russia has even launched spy satellites for Iran!

Perhaps if we’d done a little better job of spying on Iraq, we wouldn’t have had the incredible loss of lives we’ve seen so far. Spying prevents the flow of cloudy data, and cloudy beliefs. Part of the problem with Taiwan is the fact that Nixon committed the United States to a cloudy position on its relationship with the PRC, and each faction sees what they want to see in the cloud, like lying on the grass on a sunny afternoon and making sense from the random fluctuations of the condensation from evaporations from the earth’s surface.

 

Here's another page from Wikipedia which I find hard to dismiss. It makes a strong case for the history of the aboriginal roots of Taiwan's many native ethnicities.

The Austronesian language group consists of:

• Indonesian
• Javanese
• Balinese
• Sundanese
• Madurese
• Sawu
• Toraja
• Acehnese
• Tetun
• Tagalog
• Hiligaynon
• Maori
• Fijian
• Hawaiian
• Malagasy
• Rapanui

Linguistics has been one of the most important methods used (until DNA more recently, I believe) for tracing the ethnic movements of peoples in prehistory. I also accept that the population of the United States as it exists now almost completely racially exterminated those who were already here, and agree that that has little bearing on who owns the place now, but I don’t deny they exist. I also argue the same argument about who is the de facto owner of Taiwan right now.

I find it interesting when the “ethnic heritage” arguments arise, that you don’t apply the same standard and simultaneously advocate the formation of an Urghur nation separate from China based on history, culture, and current ethnicity.

 

Uh, huh. And how long has the US been spying on China. Let's just say it wasn't as late as 1999.

 

And as Mango didn't bother pointing out, China wasn't spying on the US in the 50's. I really would like to know, would China spy on the US if the US hasn't started spying on China, taking a hostile role in the first place. The likelihood is yes, but not nearly as much as it does now.

You attempted to justify that they spy on each other because they are enemies when it is just the opposite. They are enemies and one of the reasons for that is because they spy on each other. And in this case the US initiated the hostilities.

I would also like to know where you got the 40 million purged figure, especially when at 25 million had been among the most radical estimates. I can also see that you can't distinguish the difference between brutal and oppressive and idiotic economic policy.

No need to whitewash Chinese history, certainly the Commies did their share of purging. 51 and the Cultural Revolution come to mind. But those deaths reflect a mere fraction of total death. Most deaths actually occurred because Mao was an economic moron. He had a goal of catching up and overtaking Britain and US within 10 yrs, which of course, was dellusional at best. Instead of having farmers do what they do best, work on farms, he had they working backyard smelters. That, and of course the fact that some officials grossly overstating farm yields led to famine that caused death to tens of millions.

So the while you can certainly claim that Mao is an idiot (as I do); or how he should be blamed for hanging the famine on natural disasters (which though severe, wasn't the cause of the deaths) instead of coming forthright; and you can certainly argue that he's a power hungry dictator, but let's be honest, at least he's goal was a good one. He did not intend to kill Chinese people just for the sake of killing them.

Compare that to the KMT, who massacred what, 30,000 Commies as soon as they took Shanghai in the Northern Expeditions (and many other instances to many other groups hence after), just because they were getting too influential? I'd say the KMT and the Chicoms are in the same boat at best.

It's also funny that this is the first time I'm accused of being a pro-CCP historian.

 

<a HREF="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/031110/10spy.b1.htm">A Spy Who Changed History</a>
<i>
All he ever wanted was for U.S. and Chinese leaders to get along; that's what Chinese spymaster Larry Wu-Tai Chin claimed was his raison d'être for almost 40 years of spying for China. Chin, a CIA translator, analyst, and document control officer, may have been the most damaging anti-U.S. spy ever; he sold bushels of U.S. secrets to China, altering the course of history. The Chinese government knew about President Richard Nixon's secret decision

to re-establish diplomatic relations two years before Nixon's historic visit to China, and it leveraged key concessions. The North Vietnamese likely benefited from the secrets that China forwarded from Chin during the Vietnam War.
<b>
Chin's spying career began in 1948 when he joined the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai as an interpreter, after a stint at a U.S. military mission in southern China. A former mission roommate introduced Chin to a Communist official, who recruited him. In 1952, the State Department asked Chin to help interrogate Chinese prisoners for the U.S.-allied forces in Korea. Chin promptly sold the Chinese government the names of Chinese prisoners who were anti-Communists. China responded by demanding the forced repatriation of all Chinese prisoners as part of negotiations to halt the fighting. Experts believe Chin's treachery delayed the end of the Korean War for more than a year.
</b>
Also in 1952, Chin joined the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service office in Okinawa and soon hopscotched to the FBIS in California and then in Virginia as a case officer, with access to CIA headquarters in nearby Langley. Chin sold supersensitive National Intelligence Estimates and analyses on China and Southeast Asia to his handlers in London, Hong Kong, and Toronto. Since Chin also translated all the documents stolen by CIA spies in China, he helped the Chinese plug those leaks. "He was extraordinarily devastating," says former FBI Special Agent I. C. Smith. "More people lost their lives because of his treachery than [because of] Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen."

A gambler and womanizer, Chin made a fortune by putting some of the $1 million China paid him into real estate. The CIA honored him for distinguished service, kept him on as a consultant after he retired in 1981 at age 63, and pestered him to return full time.

Chin was arrested in 1985, after U.S. intelligence received sketchy information from a Chinese source, who later defected to the States, that there was a spy so prolific it took the Chinese two months to translate each batch of secrets.

To prepare for Chin's trial, prosecutor Joseph Aronica asked the CIA to prepare a color-coded chart of every major development in U.S.-Sino relations between 1945 and 1985, onto which he transposed Chin's movements and access to classified documents. "He admitted doing it, was proud of it," says Aronica, now an attorney with Duane Morris. Chin committed suicide in his jail cell in February 1986--just two weeks after his conviction on 17 counts of espionage, conspiracy, and tax evasion--while awaiting sentencing. Chin slid a clean brown trash bag over his head, tied it with a shoelace from newly ordered high-tops, crossed his arms over his chest, lay down, and quietly asphyxiated himself. The U.S. government had no apparent desire to pursue Chin's legacy further. "As soon as [Chin] suffocated himself," says Smith, "it closed the door on the scandal.</i>

 

First of all, if my previous remarks came off as offensive, I apologize. I don't know what I was thinking.

However, as far as the subject matter goes, you'd notice I specifically used historical and international legal points as supposed to my own opinions. Whether Taiwan is an independent entity at this point in time, well, that's subjective. However, whether Taiwan was historically a distinct entity, was not.

As I've mentioned, we have strong evidence to suggest that Taiwanese aren't of Polynesian decent. Certainly, history can be revised as we are not dealing with something that we can be 100% certain. But the evidences are pretty convincing and it would take even more convincing evidence to overturn the present working theory.

One of the easiest ways to prove otherwise is a gene pool testing among the so called Taiwanese whose lineage doesn't trace directly to China in the 40's and 50's. Yet such a study (albeit based on a small sample) did not reveal anything we do not know already, that being Taiwanese being closely tied to Mainland Chinese.

As I've mentioned already, certainly nobody is forcing the US to admit Taiwan is part of China, or any other country/region/entity for that matter. Those 25 or so countries that do recognize Taiwan are not invaded or such.

But I should point out that you overestimate the effect of propaganda on neo-communist society and underestimate its impace on democracies. The urban Chinese have stopped believing Commie crap since the late 70's. If the Cultural Revolution has taught them anything, it is pragmatism. As for the rural Chinese, they are not likely to care what anybody (Commie, Democrats, the Vaticans) says if it doesn't translate to real benefits to them.

 

Not to be completely contradictory, but in fairness, after my previous pro-Taiwan statements, I think I should provide balance.
You compare the Cultural Revolution to Chinese independence. The first was an exercise in why ideology and one point of view lead to horrible outcomes (IMHO, Mao truly believed he was doing what was best for his people during the cultural revolution, but was just horribly wrong). Of course, the millions that died from starvation probably didn't care about intent, but to me it makes some difference.

Until the death of Sun Yat-sen, the KMT & the Chinese Communist party were allies. It was analogous to the situation in Afghanistan during Soviet occupation. There were various warlords and groups fighting together despite different goals. The alliance ended when Zhou Enlai, the PRC's first Premier and Foreign Minister got the crap beat out of him by some KMT thugs as part of an effort to break up a worker's protest.

During his time, Chiang Kai-shek was cruel, stupid and selfish. The Chinese Communist party really was better to the people. When retreating from the Japanese, for instance, the KMT breached the dykes on the yellow river causing massive peasant deaths from flooding in order to save themselves.

The US supported the KMT by default because of "red fever", the stated goal of the Communist party to incite Communist revolution worldwide and the US was part of the world. This was percieved as a perpetual "5th column" threat. Stalin didn't like Mao, calling the Chinese Communist Party "margarine Communists" and encouraged Mao to come to agreement with the KMT and gave the KMT loans with better interest rates!

The following quotes come from an out of print book, China, A Cultural History (it uses the old-style transliteration, so Mao Tze-Tung is spelled Mao Zedong, etc.)

This is remarkably like the Soviet attitude towards the US after World War I regarding European monarchies.

The US didn't know this, however, and "red" was "red", so the Truman did the stupidest thing in the world: he had surrendered Japanese soldiers "maintain control" ( with weapons!) in Manchuria until they could airlift the KMT in to take over. This left the Manchurians to associate the KMT with the Japanese, and did in the already inept KMT.

As has often been the case this century, the US hurt its longterm goals by supporting "anybody but the Communist" (even though the KMT did become a model democracy) and the great idealistic Communist state floundered under its intensely idealistic, but horribly inexperienced leadership which eventually devolved, as Russia has, into a Nationalist State, free of the idealism of it's founding but not the immense aspirations.

 

I'm well aware of the aboriginese and I've made no attempt to discount their existence. However, the question I pose to you is, whether they got there before the Chinese. They didn't. So still, what historical justification can be made to conclude that Taiwan isn't part of China?

After all, that is what we are debating over right? Historical and legal justifications?

 

Irrelevant. This story reminds me of a similar news that occurred only a month and half ago. A German women somehow got hold of a user's manual of Germany's Type 214 sub. She tried to sell it to China.

Before she could get in touch with the Chinese, however, Canadian spy agency got news of this. They set the woman up by having one of their operatives pose as a Chinese spy. She was arrested obviously, caught redhanded.

Of course, some political opportunists got hold of this and pretty much said China spied on Germany. But as a Chinese friend of mine pointed out, this has nothing to do with China. It is everything between the woman, Germany and the Canadian operatives.

Chin is just like the woman. He's an opportunist, for a price of course. His existence doesn't prove that China systematically spied on the US in the 50's. And as for afterwards, well, the Chicoms would be extremely stupid not to exploit an open and proven reliable (as long as you pay him) informant.

 

I reviewed your previous posts in this thread and did not find the phrase:

doesn't prove that China systematically spied on the US in the 50's.

Why did you draw emphasis to it since it wasn't used previously?
If you have used it previously and I missed it, please cite the time and date that you used it.


You have kept moving the <b>target</b>, yet attempt to dismiss/reject my posts when I hit the <b>target</b>.

 

Actually I didn't move my target at all.

Saying China was spying on the US in the 50's because of Chin is just like some guy comes to you offering 20,000 bucks, up front and for free, no strings attached, you accept and gets called a bank robber.

As I've said already, Chin is an opportunist and a double agent. It would appear to me that he was spying for both the US and China. And evidence suggests that he was spying for the US first.

 

First, I was not offended. You were right. I quoted a biased source an offence which I find inexcusable in others.

Second quote from wikipedia article on the aboriginal tribes.

But you are correct, I don't care who got there first, anymore than I would suggest that China separate its non-Han provinces into other countries, as I jokingly implied earlier. The fact that the people of Taiwan are mostly ethnically Han and therefore they should be made one state is an argument that doesn't apply in any other instance in the world.

The Germans reunified when they mutually agreed upon it, but were acknowledged as two states. If we redraw the world along ethnic lines, we're going to have to mess up a whole bunch of countries, and I guess each house in the United States becomes some sort of semi-aligned duchy.

Who got there first doesn't matter really, either. Aboriginal residents of the US were indisputably here before England, Spain, Portugal, etc. came along and killed them off, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. I’ve not seen a major movement to return the Americas to its natives. Furthermore, as was the case for the British, it is possible for formally united entities with common language and ethnic heritage to separate.

There is an adage, "possession is nine tenths of the law". As far as I can tell, the PRC, despite claims to the opposite, doesn't directly control what occurs on the island in question, and therefore aren't owners.

I also think that Nixon made a mess of the situation, when he gave outside credence in couched terms, an outstanding legal claim on Taiwan. The US can no more give Taiwan to China than the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 which made nice between Stalin in Hitler could legally divide the independent entity Poland between the two countries. As England didn’t accept United States independence, I’m sure China finds Taiwanese independence hard to swallow. I would suggest that, as in the case of the United States Civil War, the Confederate States of America would have been established as a separate entity had it’s control been unimpeded for fifty years.

As far as I can tell, Taiwan has been free of control of the PRC for at least that long. In fact, they’ve spent about as much time in control of the single spot reserved for China in the United Nations.
Really the question is:

At what point does a national separation in fact become a national separation in law. Could England make a claim for the Norman provinces of France lost to John “Lackland” in the 13th century?

Is North Korea really not an actual entity, since it never took control of the entire country, and the leadership in the south was the one elected in the UN Sponsored election?

There’s a point at which separation in fact becomes separation in reality. I feel that line has been crossed. I also feel that as some British couldn’t give up on their claims in France. (There was a British General in the Crimean War, which was Russia vs. England and France, who persisted in calling the Russians “the French”, even in front of his French allies.) I am also ashamed that Nixon, in his quest to defeat the Soviet Union, added weight to PRC claims on Taiwan.

I would love unification to occur, if both parties want it. I also understand in the grand historical perspective that wars have been fought over such things, and it is possible that through that method the countries might be reunited and eventually legitimately come together again. The two cultures have separated some, but not enough to be incompatible. It’d certainly be easier than trying to integrate Urghurs.

My position is, however, that at one point, before Nixon the United States extended its guarantee of protection to the de facto body that governs Taiwan. I feel that such promises should not be made lightly and should always be held sacred, despite the cost.

Anyway, that's my bit for now. I've said my piece several times over and I'm going to try and not get worked up over the subject again soon. I appreciate your position and even sympathise with it in some ways, I simply think the standards for "required unification" are not standards that would be universally applied, and I feel my country has extended a pledge which makes it involved. I hope the Taiwanese vote tomorrow of their own free will to become part of PRC.

 

Saying that because only one individual was caught, it didn't happen is a specious arguement. Was the Soviet Union not spying on the US between the 1953 (Julia and Ethyl Rosenberg) and the late 70's (Aldrich Aimes).

quote from Global Security.org

 

I guess the first thing I should do is caution you on tracing historical roots based on language and language alone. It certainly is useful, however, it isn't any more or less reliable than any other method we use.

Take for example, Cantonese. Cantonese is actually in the same "language group" as Vietmese, that being Altaic (some would argue that Korean and Japanese are also Altaic). Some say that there is a working theory that as recent as the Tang dynasty, the entire Chinese language is in fact, Altaic. However, if you consider the literally hundreds of dialects currently in use in China, I'd think you'll find that "Chinese" isn't in this language group. So while it is definitely fine to use language, along with other evidence, I think you'd find that it alone will provide you with very inaccurate results at best.

As for what region legally belongs to who, that is far more subjective. You are certainly right that Nixon had no say in who Taiwan belongs to. Neither does any US president after him. All politics aside, Taiwan belongs to China and the Chinese people. It does not belong to some government, whether neo-communist or pseudo-democratic. And last time I checked, China never gave up claim on Taiwan, which is precisely why historical justifications become so very important.

We know that nobody was there before the Chinese, so we really can't say that China in encroaching on somebody else's territory, as we can say about the Crimean War. So I feel that the two issues really are not compatible.

As for letting the Taiwanese choose, well, you'd likely find that you won't get a result either way. A poll conducted by Taipei University showed that about 11% favours immediate independence, 8% favours immediate unification. The rest are undecided between undecided, maintain status quo - decide in future, maintain status quo - eventual unification and maintain status quo - separation. On a side note, maintain status quo - eventual unification portion is far greater than separation.

Even suppose the Taiwanese can decide, you really can't take their vote with any confidence. You see, the DPP has been, let's just say rewriting history. The latest row includes taking Chinese history, which had always been part of the curriculum, out of high school. Also, denying Taiwan's Chinese ties. So in any future vote, the odds would likely be stacked against the unification side. Propaganda at it's best. Imagine if you and anybody like you are born and raised and taught that you are not German. Now suppose that a chunk of Germany was lopped off, would you care?

 

Once again, source is important. If you are going to debate China vs. the US, Global Security is not a very good source candidate.

However, all that aside, I would like to know what is the motive of China's spying? In the Chin case, it appears to me that China is the one doing counter-espionage. Although I regret the loss of lives by American operatives, I think the key thing that everybody neglects to mention is that, they died spying on China.

Do we blame the Chinese for not wanting others spying on them? Why the hell were we spying on them in the first place? Since we were spying on them to the extent that we did, it already proves that we considered them enemies. And when you do that, don't expect them not to reciprocate.