People's Liberation Army Major General Zhu Chenghu's (
It is a standard tactic in both China and Taiwan to have someone make a statement about some controversial policy in a way that it remains plausibly deniable for the government yet gets the information into the public domain.
Yet it is difficult to imagine exactly why the Chinese government might want to confront the US in such a way at this moment. The "Anti-Secession" Law, with its explicit threat against an independent Taiwan, has already given impetus to a rethink of US defense policy regarding China, and has done much to resolve the murky ambiguity surrounding US reaction to China's military buildup toward strategic clarity. When US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asks just why and for what purpose China is beefing up its armed forces when it faces no external threat, we can see that the days when China was viewed through Clintonian rose-colored spectacles have clearly passed.
Taiwan apart, one of the main causes of tension between the US and China is the question of energy security. US hopes of keeping oil plentiful and cheap have not only been frustrated by the Iraq debacle but also by the soaring demand for oil in China's economy. This is why the bid for US-owned Unocal by China's CNOOC is so controversial. After Zhu's remarks, it's hard to see the US being relaxed enough to let the takeover go ahead. Add to that the fact that a major US defense review is being conducted in which China is likely to figure large, and now even larger, and there are a number or reasons why Beijing might have preferred that Zhu kept his mouth shut.
And yet whatever denials Beijing utters should be taken with a grain of salt. It is important to remember that Zhu is the dean of China's National Defense University. Beijing might say that his remarks do not represent official policy, but they certainly represent thinking at the highest levels of the People's Liberation Army. This is very worrying, because it backs up what other sources have been saying for a while about the PLA: That it is the preserve of gung-ho fantasists who think they can take on the US and win.
Readers might look askance at Zhu's remarks about "losing all cities east of Xian," which sounds more like Doctor Strangelove's General Ripper than sober strategic analysis. Let us not even speculate how people in those cities might feel about being expendable, since the views of the Chinese people are unimportant in Beijing's calculations. Let us just note that this kind of irresponsibility at this level is exactly the attitude that will lead to war. It is simply another part of the primitive psychopathology of the Chinese; they have yet to enter the modern world. Like medieval princelings, they think war is glorious, and to hell with the consequences for ordinary people.
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows recently when he declared the era of American unipolarity over. He described America’s unrivaled dominance of the international system as an anomaly that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Now, he observed, the United States was returning to a more multipolar world where there are great powers in different parts of the planet. He pointed to China and Russia, as well as “rogue states like Iran and North Korea” as examples of countries the United States must contend with. This all begs the question:
Liberals have wasted no time in pointing to Karol Nawrocki’s lack of qualifications for his new job as president of Poland. He has never previously held political office. He won by the narrowest of margins, with 50.9 percent of the vote. However, Nawrocki possesses the one qualification that many national populists value above all other: a taste for physical strength laced with violence. Nawrocki is a former boxer who still likes to go a few rounds. He is also such an enthusiastic soccer supporter that he reportedly got the logos of his two favorite teams — Chelsea and Lechia Gdansk —
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS