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Nov 4, 2011

Hmm

If you speak Chinese, please see minute 19:04 through 19:35 of this video. Here, Ma stumbles over himself, saying that all decisions he makes consider the benefit to the country and the party. The host helps him get out of the problem, immediately suggesting "but the country's benefit is most important," to which Ma responds, "of course."



In some sense, there's nothing to see here; all politicians consider the benefit of their party. But it's foolish to put these things together as equally important in a public interview.

2 comments:

justrecently said...

To be fair, Ma had just answered a question about his party there, before replying to the one about the stresses that come with the presidency - the host apparently got Ma's mind set on the party issue. And I'm sure that Tsai Ing-wen - no great orator either - will have her unlucky minutes during the campaign, too. One more thing - the DPP is modelled after the KMT's organizational structure in many ways (as far as I remember), and the KMT is modelled after the former CPSU (Mikhail Borodin's Leninist input is still noticeable). No big deal in my view, but funny to watch.

Btw, the host repeated Ma's line about the country's benefit, and omitted what Ma had just said about the KMT - that was pretty cooperative.

阿牛 said...

You're absolutely right. The Leninist structure of both the KMT and the DPP is often on display.