Diplomacy is China's weak suit

Ten years ago, I had an opportunity to meet with some Chinese diplomats and discuss with them China's diplomatic and united-front propaganda work. One of the senior diplomats admitted they had been short of talented diplomats after the death of Zhou Enlai (周恩來) and Liao Chenzhi (廖承志). When Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) was in power, people like Yang Shangkun (楊尚昆) headed the international affairs and united-front work and assigned lackeys like Wu Xueqian (吳學謙) and Qian Qichen (錢其琛) to high-ranking positions.

As we may still remember, China launched a long string of united-front propaganda offensives against Taiwan back in late 1970s and early 1980s, such as the "one country, two systems," "three links, four exchanges" (三通四流), "Ye Jianying's nine principles" (葉九條), and "an open letter to Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國)." They were very creative and efficient provocation strategies. These strategies were so powerful that the only thing Taiwan could do was to block the circulation of these statements.

Several dramatic changes, however, took place in the 1980s. Although the communist regimes in eastern Europe and Russia collapsed one after another in a trend of democratic revolution, communist China refused to give in. After the Tiananmen Square massacre, China was isolated in international society and lost confidence in its diplomatic work.

After the 1990s, Beijing's high-ranking cadres were almost totally unaware of international trends, nor do they understand their status in the international community.

Instead, they remained self-satisfied about the fact that China is a big country and could ran against global democratic trends. Since the massacre of student activists at Tiananmen Square, China has made numerous inappropriate moves. The release of the Taiwan policy white paper is just one of them.

The tone of the white paper is an indication of the lack of talent in China's diplomatic and united-front institutions. The result of having a group of flunkeys with no creativity, decisiveness or vision is that they can only behave like hooligans and threaten Taiwan and the international community. What else can they possibly do?

Rick Chu is associate editor in chief of the Taipei Times.