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Apr 30, 2009

Re: Pomfret

To Pomfret: Yes, we can stop worrying about a US-China war, but we can't stop worrying about Taiwan.

Taiwanese are highly averse to political subservience to China. As the ancient Chinese saying goes, people here would "rather be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix" (寧做雞頭,不為鳳尾).

But, as economic integration continues, and the international community drops out of the picture, Chinese leverage to force political surrender will continually increase, and eventually be used -- and people would probably rather be politically subservient than fight a war or have their economy ripped out from under them.

This is not a love fest. This is a trap.

3 comments:

David said...

Pomfret is consistently clueless about Taiwan. I wonder if he has ever visited here or who his sources on Taiwan are (if any).

Haitien said...

"And with the latest developments in Taiwan, here's our East Asian correspondent reporting from Beijing."

I suppose part of it is being a small country on the edge of a large one, but I wonder how often international reporters paint the leaders of countries like Estonia or Georgia as troublemakers for having the gall to speak up for their constituents?

janice said...

These gratuitous jabs at CSB which Pomfret managed to sneak into every post that's even tangentially related to Taiwan are really quite unseemly.