Thu, Sep 23, 2010 page8

• [ LETTERS ]

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  The real troublemaker

  In a recent article, Wang Jyh-perng (王志鵬), a researcher at the Association for Managing Defense and Strategies, examined US concern over China’s development of anti-ship ballistic missiles, and he draws several conclusions from this development (“US grows wary of the East Wind,” Sept. 17, page 8). Surprisingly, Wang concludes that “there is a significant danger of Taiwan being dragged into conflict in China’s backyard by the actions of the US military.”

  I find this to be an incredibly uninformed, one-sided conclusion and I question Wang’s understanding of military matters. Why does Wang assume that it would be the US military and not the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) which drags Taiwan into a conflict? And why is it “China’s backyard” and not Japan, South Korea and Taiwan’s backyard as well? Yes, the US military was likely gathering intelligence against China, but this breaks no international law and is much less intrusive than the rampant Chinese espionage against the US and Taiwan.

  The US military has long been a foundation of stability in East Asia. Indeed, had it not been for the US 7th Fleet, Taiwan might have been “liberated” by the PLA back in 1950. In contrast, China has well over a thousand ballistic missiles pointed at Taiwan and it may be targeting other nations in the region as well.

  More importantly, the rapidly improving PLA regularly holds large-scale military exercises which are designed to attack and defeat Taiwan’s forces. The US military has been Taiwan’s ally for six decades and its actions in East Asia directly increase Taiwan’s defense and security. As US military officials call for a renewal of dialogue, their PLA counterparts are boasting that they can sink US aircraft carriers. If anything, it will be the nationalistic PLA and not the stability-minded US military which initiates conflict in East Asia.

  AARON JENSEN

  Taipei

  Chinese reasoning

  Your editorial on China’s institutionalized irrationality in foreign and military affairs was insightful (Editorial, Sept. 21, page 8). However, I’d like to offer a slightly different interpretation of the lesson that China’s involvement in the Korean War provides today.

  At the time of North Korea’s invasion of the South, China’s leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) had only recently proclaimed communist rule over the whole of China. This marked the return of political absolutism, nearly four decades after the end of Manchu Qing rule. But communism was something that most Chinese people had never asked for and that a sizable minority had fought to prevent.

  By quickly establishing the US as a demonic new enemy, Mao galvanized support for his regime. He was also able to neutralize the domestic threat still represented by hundreds of thousands of unwanted soldiers and officers from Nationalist armies that had surrendered in the final weeks of the Chinese Civil War. Feebly armed and equipped, they were fed into the meat-grinder of war in Korea.

  So the intervention in Korea was rational to the degree that it served the needs of Mao and his inner circle. It was “irrational” only in the sense that it defied the rationally optimistic expectations of pundits in the West.

  As The Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb demonstrates in the context of financial markets, rational expectations are always, eventually, blindsided by an accumulation of off-stage contradictions. The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu (孫子) understood this too, counseling any would-be king-of-kings to profit from that principle by being the agent of irrationality rather than its object.

  The academics, think tanks and diplomats who are “puzzled” by China’s arms build-up and nationalist chest-pounding need to examine the basis for their optimism about Beijing’s intentions. Rhetoric about “peaceful development” aside, there is little to suggest that the Chinese Communist Party intends for a newly rich and powerful China to slot neatly into the Western Pacific’s Pax Americana. In fact, for several years now, it has been obvious that China’s inexcusable military intimidation of the peaceable inhabitants of Taiwan is a sign of things to come.

  DON CROPPER

  Taipei

  Yunlin land subsidence

  It is remarkable that Wen Jet-chau (溫志超), of Yunlin University of Science and Technology, who is apparently dedicated to the study of the geological and economic aspects of land subsidence and overuse of groundwater in Yunlin County, can attribute only political causes to these problems and only political solutions to them (“Watery issues overflow in Yunlin,” Sept. 18, page 8).

  My submission to the discussion would be that his is precisely the wrong conclusion to draw.

  The cases of land subsidence and overuse of groundwater in Yunlin are properly understood as an economic problem, rather than a political one.

  The right questions to ask are technological and financial, with an eye to the enterprise of producing water recycling, aquifer recharging and rainwater harvesting equipment so that the sealing of groundwater wells would become a nuisance issue, rather than one of economic import. Such equipment is apparently already used in the US Midwest and technological improvement in this field is ongoing with the commercial development of better filtering technologies for use in water recycling equipment.

  The positive externalities of such enterprises, were they to be brought to bear successfully in Yunlin County, would go far beyond the greater efficiency of water conservation necessary to managing land subsidence. Consider the possible financial benefits to Yunlin farmers of having irrigation water of sufficient quantity to provide for two rice crops per year instead of one.

  Wen’s characterization of the Yunlin farmers as trying to get away with this “in order to make more money ...” should be properly placed in its rightful context as an attempt by these farmers to secure values necessary not only to staying alive, but to making the conditions of life around them better.

  MICHAEL FAGAN

  Tainan
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