During the three years he has been in office, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has shown that all he is capable of is raising government debt, wasting money and stirring up social divisions. He has been called incompetent and people are finding it harder to make a living now than they did four years ago.
Ma, however, blows his own trumpet and says his political “achievements” have been greater than even Republic of China (ROC) founding father Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) could have ever imagined. He is a dreamer trapped in a time warp and fixated on the idea of one great China.
With Taiwan’s president leader talking about the nation’s eventual annexation by China, it is little wonder people around the world believe such an outcome to be inevitable. It is also little wonder that other dreamers like Paul Kane propose that the US should ditch Taiwan to get China to write off the US$1.14 trillion debt it owes Beijing.
Kane is not an economist, nor is he an expert on Asia-Pacific affairs. He once received a medal for bravery from the US Marine Corps, but that was because he saved a man in the Silver Spring Metro Station in Maryland. He also wrote a petition about the Iraq War, based on the experience he gained while serving in Iraq as a press officer with the US Marines.
Kane used the title of “former international security fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School” to deceive people when he wrote an op-ed piece entitled “To Save Our Economy, Ditch Taiwan,” showing both himself and the New York Times to be a joke.
Kane’s opinions were pure fantasy. If Taiwan’s absorption into China is “inevitable,” as Kane stated, why would China want to write off the debt that the US owes? The pile of foreign debt caused by the imbalance in US-China trade is the result of unfair competition from China and the wasteful habits of Americans. In such an environment, the US’ economic problems are not going to be solved even if China does write off its debt.
Kane said the security promises the US has given to Taiwan are remnants of the Cold War, but Washington’s security alliances with countries like Japan, Korea, Australia and the Philippines are also part of the system created in that era. By ditching Taiwan, the threat that China poses to the US would not decrease: It would only increase.
Kane thinks nothing of democracy and is only worried about the US getting dragged into a war if China invades Taiwan. However, the combination of US military deterrence and the interdependence of the Chinese and US economies means that Beijing has already lost the option of using military force.
Taiwan’s dreamer has come up with the idea of selling out the country by way of “eventual unification” and the US dreamer has come up with the idea of ditching Taiwan to save the US economy. Both of these dreamers have one thing in common — they are good-for-nothing losers with no respect for democracy who will only bring down the nation.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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