Letters:

Don't get mad, get even

I am amazed by the Taiwanese commentaries that try to legitimize Boeing's flip-flop on Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮) scheduled visit.

The fact that, in the past three years, Taiwan has purchased only 17 commercial jets from Boeing while the PRC has purchased 57 should not and cannot be the accepted reason, let alone justification, for Boeing to abruptly cancel a visit from one of their major customers. It is Boeing that has humiliated the Taiwanese people, regardless of where the pressure came from.

Boeing executives should have more political wisdom in handling this kind of pressure unless they are prepared to allow such obvious political blackmail to run their business in the future. They must bear the consequences and they will pay for the damage that they have inflicted upon themselves.

Boeing, the world's largest commercial jet manufacturer, armed with dozens of so-called China experts in its management team, is not a rookie in handling the intricate nature of Taiwan-China business and political affairs. The fact that they allowed themselves to be pressured to cancel Lu's scheduled visit after they had agreed to receive her shows the poor judgement of their hired China experts.

If I were a Boeing shareholder, I would certainly want to challenge the quality and the value of services offered by these experts.

As for Taiwan, the best approach to get even, after voicing your displeasure, is to play it cool by treating it as a price of doing business with companies like Boeing.

Take the lump for the time being, but remember to save up the experience in your political inventory. Next time, when you have to deal with them again, get as much out of them as possible for the pride of Taiwan and Taiwanese people, as you are the only ones who know how invaluable the price of pride is.

James Chou
Vancouver, British Columbia

Weak argument

The way Nathan Jones criticized the Bush administration, explicitly or implicitly in his article (`Douglas Paal ignores the realities of occupation,' Aug. 21, page 9), clearly characterizes the common mentality of some Democrats in the US that when their view on a certain social or political issue differs from other people's they insist that their view is the norm to follow.

To me US President George W. Bush is doing just fine. Jones is probably laying out an argument against Bush simply for the sake of argument.

Ching H. Li
Changhua