US scholars cite need to fight foreign media's `spin'

Friedman said the name-change issue was not a new issue.

When Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) army came to Taiwan, he felt, after crushing the people, the number one problem was inflation. So they put out money to control it, called what -- the New Taiwan Dollar," Friedman said.

"So, in terms of the use of the word Taiwan to establish sovereignty, the truth is it goes back to Chiang Kai-shek."

The process of Taiwanization had been expanding in the 1970s under Chiang, when he allowed more seats for Taiwan in the legislature, and in the 1980s under his son, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), Friedman said.

Conspiracy

"It was an ordinary piece of KMT politics of being on Taiwan, and the name change issue is not a recent conspiracy, it is a piece of the reality of being on Taiwan," he said.

"After all, the American office here is the American Institution in Taiwan and the American act is called the Taiwan Relations Act," he said.

Questioned on the US' sensitivity over the name-change issue, Friedman attributed it to "the rise of Chinese power."

"China not wanting to see it happen, and China worrying about Taiwan identification (台灣認同) and Taiwan ethnic identification (台灣民族認同) and essentially trying to get the United States to act for China to stop Taiwan ethnic identification," Friedman said.

Friedman thinks the reason the US does this for China relates to the international situation following 911 and the Iraq invasion.

Proliferation

"With China's rise as an economic power and the feeling that you need China for many many things, not just North Korea, proliferation, and Pakistan, but lots of things, China each time would say to the US `but this costs us [domestically] to do this, and what are you going to do for us?" he said.

"So when I go back home I'll say to my people that we gained something too, and the US has been accepting that line and acting for Beijing in terms of its feeling of its general international situation," Friedman said.