OT; from The Economist, on the subject of Taiwan
ASIA
China?s hop, skip and jump on to Taiwan
B E I J I N G
First Hong Kong, then Macau, next Taiwan. China intends the reunification of the ?motherland? to be unstoppable
EVER the enigmatic oracle, Mao Zedong once said that it might take China 100 years to bring Taiwan back into the fold of a reunified motherland. Did he therefore attach no particular urgency to the task? Or did he mean that China should never let up in its efforts to achieve it, no matter how long it might take?
On February 21st, China suddenly stepped up the pressure. In a government white paper, published by the State Council, the government?s highest body, it said that it would resort to ?all drastic measures possible, including the use of force? if Taiwan were to refuse ?indefinitely? to negotiate with the mainland on reunification. China has long insisted that it has the right to take up arms against Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province. But until now it has said it would do so only if Taiwan made a formal declaration of independence, or if it were occupied by foreign forces. Though this week?s white paper gives no deadlines for talks to start, and senior Chinese officials refused steadfastly to be drawn on the subject, the addition of a third trip-wire for military action marks a significant?and worrying?shift in Chinese policy.
The timing is not coincidental. On March 18th, Taiwan is due to hold an election to find a replacement for President Lee Teng-hui. Last year Mr Lee infuriated China by calling for relations between the two to be put on a ?special state-to-state? footing. Four years ago, China had tried to frighten the Taiwanese out of voting for him, by holding military exercises involving crack troops opposite Taiwan. As they rehearsed their amphibious assaults, China conducted ?missile tests?, shooting across the Taiwan Strait and into the sea near some of its busiest ports. These shots backfired badly. Not only did Mr Lee win handsomely, but the United States was so worried that it sent two aircraft-carrier battle-groups to help protect the island.
This time China is hoping to drive down support for Chen Shui-bian. Mr Chen?s Democratic Progressive Party is formally committed to promoting Taiwan?s independence but, realising that voters are not keen for a bust-up over the issue, Candidate Chen has been promising not to declare independence, nor even to hold a referendum on the issue, unless China uses force.
Mr Chen, however, is not the only man that China dislikes. It would not be very happy with a victory for Mr Lee?s vice-president, Lien Chan. Mr Lien this week called for ?patience? in the face of China?s threats. He had previously been promising to improve relations with the mainland. But China suspects him of following too closely in the hated Mr Lee?s footsteps. It would probably prefer a win by James Soong, an independent and the most pro-China of the three main candidates. But Chinese threats are unlikely to win Mr Soong friends in Taiwan. According to the latest polls, the white paper has had no discernible impact on Taiwanese voters? preferences.
So are China and Taiwan heading for another showdown? Not necessarily, at least not yet. Neither side is moving troops around. America has not dispatched any warships, though it has told China of its ?grave concern? at military threats to Taiwan. Yet China?s new policy shift may end up having a greater impact than the rocket-propelled diplomacy of four years ago.
Much will depend on what happens after the election. China has said it wants talks to start quickly. But it has also modified its own approach in more subtle ways. The white paper contains no demand that Taiwan must publicly repudiate Mr Lee?s ?state-to-state? formula. Nor does it insist that talks on reunification should start before other issues, such as economic ties, are broached. And it offers to deal with Taiwan on an ?equal? footing, though that hardly sounds like a concession, with the threat of invasion hanging in the air.
Why the sudden change of policy? ?After the return of Hong Kong and Macau, it is natural that we have felt a certain urgency in solving the Taiwan problem,? explains the Chinese government spokesman, Zhu Bangzao. Another possible explanation is that China?s president, Jiang Zemin, is casting around for something more to ensure his place in China?s history books, rather as Deng Xiaoping set his heart on the return of Hong Kong.
Maybe, but invading Taiwan would present difficulties. Although China backs its determination to get Taiwan to the negotiating table with military boasts about how it is ?fully capable? of retaking the island, few observers believe it could mount a successful invasion: China has plenty of troops but they may not be up to invading Taiwan. China?s military planners know this. Those who detect the army?s fingerprints on the new policy see the new sense of urgency as a way to justify higher military spending.
The risks are high for China too. The more it blusters, the more it risks pushing Taiwan further towards the independence that China says it will not tolerate. In the meantime, its belligerence is stiffening criticism in America?s Congress, just as two important pieces of legislation are being considered.
One, the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, would strengthen America?s military ties with Taiwan. This week?s threats make it harder than ever for the Clinton administration to defeat the bill, which has already passed the House of Representatives and is now before the Senate. Another congressional vote will come later in the summer, when America must decide whether to grant China permanent normal trading relations as a step towards its entry into the World Trade Organisation. That is something China badly wants to achieve before the year is out. But threatening Taiwan is not the most obvious way to get it.
Also re: McCain
The man who healed the Vietnam wound
JOHN McCAIN may be splitting the Republican Party asunder. But when it comes to the rather more important question of the country as a whole, he is more of a healer than a divider. Ever since Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975, the United States has been suffering from post-Vietnam stress disorder. Mr McCain is a vital part of the country?s struggle to put the disorder behind it.
The Vietnam war divided the United States more bitterly than any war other than the Civil War. It maimed two presidencies. It undermined the country?s faith in its great institutions, as the left railed against the people who got the country into the war and the right railed, equally angrily, against those who made such a hash of getting it out. It turned people not just against the ancient ideal of military service but against the ideal of public service in general. If America?s current malaise can be described as private affluence and public anomie, then Vietnam bears much of the blame.
In previous presidential campaigns the war has been the secret that dared not speak its name. Bill Clinton could hardly feel America?s pain on the subject when he spent the war not inhaling in Oxford. But many leading Republicans found it hard to accuse him of being a draft-dodger when they too pulled strings to make sure that they and their kind avoided service. Both Dan Quayle and George W. Bush spent the war defending their native states against invasion from their next-door neighbours.
But Mr McCain is putting the war at the heart of his campaign. His acolytes do not turn up to his rallies carrying portentous policy documents, as Bill Clinton?s acolytes turned up in 1992 with copies of ?Putting People First?. They turn up clutching copies of Mr McCain?s memoirs, ?Faith of My Fathers? (Random House, 1999), holding it aloft while he is speaking, often with tears rolling down their faces. The book is all about how Mr McCain found himself by going to serve in Vietnam; and a constant refrain of his speeches is that his fellow countrymen can find themselves, too, if they will only rediscover the virtues of public service.
The change in the mood about military service began with an outpouring of emotion about the second world war. Steven Spielberg?s ?Saving Private Ryan? succeeded in mixing bloody battle scenes with an uplifting story about an attempt to save a mother from seeing her fourth son suffer the same fate as his brothers, and die in the war. Tom Brokaw?s ?The Greatest Generation?, a book about the men and women who came of age in time for that war, has been on the New York Times best-seller list for over a year.
Mr McCain provides the perfect link between the greatest generation and the Vietnam generation. The white-haired senator looks as if he could well have suffered at the hands of the Nazis rather than the Communists. And his book is as much about his grandfather and father?both of them four-star admirals who saw distinguished service in the second world war?as it is about himself. The impact of ?Faith of My Fathers? is stunning. It makes Vietnam less of an isolated disaster, more a part of a grand tradition of military service.
The task of rehabilitation is made all the easier by the fact that Mr McCain spent most of the war being tortured by psychopaths, not mowing down innocent villagers. On October 26th 1967 he had to eject himself from his aircraft in the sky above North Vietnam, breaking his left arm, his right arm in three places and his right knee. A crowd of Vietnamese then broke his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted him in the groin.
The guards at the Hoa Lo prison?the infamous Hanoi Hilton?at first refused to give him medical treatment unless he revealed military secrets and confessed to being a war criminal. Then, on discovering that his father was commander-in-chief of the Pacific fleet, they tried to turn him into a propaganda tool. They wanted him to denounce America in return for medical assistance. They also offered to release him, only to have the offer rejected. When he was at last released, after five-and-a-half years in captivity, he weighed less than seven stone and was unable to comb his own hair, because his broken bones had healed so badly.
Mr McCain?s record in the war explains his appeal to two unexpected groups of people. The first are the working-class Democrats who came out to vote for him in such impressive numbers in Michigan. These are the people whose fathers went off to fight in Vietnam while their richer countrymen stayed at home burning flags and getting degrees. And they are also the people who seethed with rage when Jane Fonda shrilled for the Vietcong and Hollywood movies turned Vietnam vets into drug-hazed zombies.
The second group, the normally liberal chattering classes, is rather more confused about its enthusiasm for Mr McCain. Journalists are supposed to like him because he offers them free doughnuts and unparalleled access. But the bright people?s enthusiasm for Mr McCain runs much deeper than this, and extends to those who have never set foot on the Straight Talk Express.
Mr McCain speaks to the professional classes? guilt about not serving in Vietnam just as clearly as he speaks to the Reagan Democrats? anger about serving and being betrayed. In 1983 Christopher Buckley wrote a famous article lamenting the fact that he and most of his peers had managed to get out of serving in Vietnam. Much of the article was taken up with remembering that he and his friends suffered not a jot of deprivation at home while their less privileged countrymen were dying in South-East Asia. But part of it was a meditation about what they had lost by not going. ?We forfeited what might have been the ultimate opportunity, in increasingly self-obsessed times, of making the ultimate commitment to something greater than ourselves: the survival of comrades.?
The betting is still, though more warily, that the Republican machine will propel Mr Bush to the nomination this summer. But even if Mr McCain fails to capture his party?s nomination, he may succeed in doing something even more important. The notion of public service has been comprehensively trashed in the wake of Vietnam, by the government-hating right as much as by the establishment-bating left. Thanks to Mr McCain, it might just possibly be on its way to becoming fashionable again.
fashionable (sic)
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