I've been following the situation in Taiwan for some time - since I lived there in the early 90's. I used to see the pro democracy riots - but didn't understand what they were at the time. This history of Taiwan was one of the better explanations of the situation that I'd seen in a while. I recommend you have a glance:
http://zen.sandiego.edu:8080/Jerome/1105949397/index_html
Basically there is a lot of western hypocrisy. The West supposedly supports democracy - except when other interests (commercial) get in the way.
Taiwan is a democracy – actually a decent one, where opposition parties have a chance and the press is mostly free (unlike HK). Taiwan hasn't been part of China for ages - and even then it was sort of an outpost. As this history demonstrates, this is analogous to saying Canada has always being a part of England.
Meanwhile, Canada doesn't recognize it as a country. The UN doesn't recognize it. Despite it being in the top 10 of world exporters it was until recently banned from the WTO. IMF and World Bank don't recognize it.
Canada doesn't have an embassy there for fear of irritating China. As a small free democracy next which lives next to a giant Canada really should recognize it. Imagine if every country wouldn’t recognize Canada because the US claimed our country as a state of the US?
China has managed to divide and conquor western countries on this topic. And beside the US no countries seem to care.
Posted by Anthony at January 27, 2005 09:50 AM | TrackBack