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Editorial: China and the KMT tipping point

Circus maestro P.T. Barnum would be proud of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Su Chi (蘇起): If you're going to build a career on hamfisted agit-prop, then at least make it flamboyant.

In his latest salvo of unverifiable claims, Su has supposedly relied on a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) central executive committee member to tell the world that the DPP government is to start developing nuclear weapons, but not without finding an escape route for President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in advance of a post-presidential indictment.

Like so many of his colleagues, Su has a record of disseminating bogus information and then retracting it -- but only if called on it by the aggrieved parties. Sober analysts will therefore take his grandstanding with several pillars of salt, especially given that KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) seems to be out of the loop -- again.

And for Su to suggest that Taiwan is becoming a North Korean-style state is typical of his idiocy and contempt for the Taiwanese public, but he has also failed to explain why Chen, presumably a Kim Jong-il in the making, would seek asylum in the US if he were angling to be this country's next dictator.

Yet Su has touched on an interesting issue. If there is any truth to his words, then it appears that the Taiwanese government is learning from trends in Northeast Asia and the Middle East: Drop the "N" word and people start to take you very seriously. In Taiwan's case that would be a welcome change.

We look forward to people less predictable than Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) addressing the veracity of Su's claims. Until then, Su will continue with his agenda of distracting attention -- especially Washington's -- from developments in the legislature in which he had a direct role.

Su serves on the legislative National Defense Committee, and on Wednesday he justified the committee slashing the military's missile budget by saying that it would provoke China.

Such a landmark action and reasoning by the KMT would ordinarily ring alarm bells all the way to the White House. But these are not ordinary times, and the White House appears just as clueless about the agenda of the KMT as it was at the beginning of the Bush administration.

The KMT is fast shedding any pretense of being a "nationalist" party in opposition to its communist foe. Its latest act indicates that -- in strategic and ideological terms -- it is settling comfortably into the role of proxy for the Chinese Communist Party.

For years now KMT politicians have been making trips to Beijing that compromised national security -- all as Taiwan's intelligence and security services sat on their hands. And in almost every action it has taken since 2000, the KMT has ensured that Taiwan's ability to defend itself would be retarded in the face of China's malevolent and growing strength.

It is clear that Ma Ying-jeou's various protestations against Beijing's ill treatment of its subjects amount to little more than fluff.

The big picture is this: Even if Ma were sincere about protecting Taiwan's democracy, his hardliner party machine is not. His inability to control the hardliners indicates that his election would bring back to power the kinds of people that most Taiwanese had assumed wilted away sometime after the end of martial law.

The KMT has blustered for years about what to do with the cross-strait impasse. It has lectured us on restraint and the "status quo." But this week it has reached its tipping point: It is now attempting to have the "status quo" collapse irreversibly in China's favor.

Which brings us back to Barnum: The more flamboyant the denials from the KMT, the better. But when it comes to cross-strait punditry, and especially in the US, there are suckers born every minute.
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