China Peace Offer

Peace Offer my ass. You know how much disdain I have for Chinese President Hu Jintao's "peace offer" to Taiwan? As much as I have for the Bush Administration's attempt at "negotiation" with Iran regarding its nuclear program, and that's saying a lot.

Folks, it's not a negotiation if the result you want is the precondition for talks.

Now here's the frustrating thing. US media predictably buys into the "Ahmadinejad is a crazy mofo and the President is a great man of vision" paradigm and so I'm not surprised by the fact that none of the major news networks are really pointing out the fact that there's no way negotiations could even plausibly occur in this situation, and it's not an indication that Iran is not willing to negotiate per se, just not playing against a loaded deck. Here, at least the Europeans *generally* aren't so biased against Iran that they buy into US assertions of Iran's unreasonableness.

No such luck with Taiwan though. I swear, it's as if knowing absolutely nothing about the Taiwan-China situation is a prerequisite for reporting on the situation. Here's a particularly frustrating examples that I must ridicule mercilessly.

1. Jonathan Watts, The Guardian

Mr. Hu held out an olive branch to Taiwan. "We would like to make a solemn appeal: On the basis of the one-China principle, let us discuss a formal end to the state of hostility between the two sides, reach a peace agreement," he said. "We are willing to make every effort with the utmost sincerity to achieve peaceful reunification of the two sides and will never allow anyone to separate Taiwan from the motherland in any name or by any means." Taiwan's government rejected the overture as "devoid of significance."

No shit. Utmost sincerity my ass. On the basis of One-China? This is not an olive branch proposal (which is already biased language since it implies that Hu is seeking peace, when in fact the PRC is the country that is targeting Taiwan with a huge military buildup), it's a demand for surrender. Watts could have easily chosen neutral language, but chose not to do so. The things he left out of his report are absolutely crucial, and by omitting them he painted a dangerously inaccurate picture of the situation. And this is what he missed: Taiwan must give up sovereignty in order to enter negotiations with Beijing. Many other better bloggers on Taiwan have pointed out how absurd this position is. At this point, you simply cannot interpret Hu's statements as those seeking peace - China has not reduced its military threat, nor has it eased up on Taiwan internationally. A most disgusting example appeared recently in the World Cyber Games (which could be considered the Olympics of video gaming), when Chinese players manhandled the 3rd place Taiwanese winner of a competition for displaying Taiwan's national flag. The sad part of this for me personally is that I had originally liked one of the Chinese StarCraft players - though suffice to say I lost my respect for him afterwards, even if he did defeat Savior.

Say what you will about President Chen's poor leadership, but I believe that in this situation he made the correct choice in rejecting the surrender demand.

Chen: "Since Hu Jintao still demands 'one China' as a precondition, this would be a surrender agreement rather than a peace agreement,"

Right on. Whether or not you *want* Taiwan to surrender is a different question altogether; even if you believe that China and Taiwan ought to be unified, the language used in international media is provocative in that it paints the military aggressor in the situation as the peace seeker who resorts to force only in the last resort. I remember that something similar happened 4 years ago, when the United States painted an image of Saddam Hussein as an unreasonable dictator who "forced" the US to invade because he couldn't comply with US demands, which eventually were revealed to be impossible. (You can't conclusively prove the absence of something) That didn't turn out so well.

Chen has called on Beijing to abandon the one-China principle, scrap the abominable anti-secession law which allows Beijing to "legally" invade Taiwan (since when has murder been legal), and withdraw missiles aimed at Taiwan. Now I've talked to a fair share of people from China who believe that this is all unwarranted, and all of the aforementioned policies are justified, and us Taiwanese should be thankful that the PRC has allowed us to squat on the island so long, since we long deserved to suffer the PRC's righteous wrath in trying to tear apart the glorious motherland. Fine, that's understandable. Given that the Chinese media does not exactly benefit from reporting on the issue from both sides, it's hard for me to harshly criticize these people for buying CCP propoganda.

So that hasn't been the focus of my rant today. No, what frustrates me is how the international media which really should know better can just overlook all the facts, blindly accept anything China says as fact, and report that it's TAIWAN's fault that tensions have increased.

This was especially notable when the "Anti-Secession Law" was passed. How is it reasonable that "law" (read: propoganda) dictated by an authoritarian society which states that China has the legal right to murder Taiwanese is valid? The Taiwanese aren't happy with China, and aren't exactly friendly? Well, color me unimpressed.

Here's an AFP report on the US reaction to the speech, at one point stating:

"Chinese President Hu Jintao has called for peace with Taiwan".

Priceless. What's the most infuriating part of the entire situation? The Taiwan-Independence side has repeatedly called for peace and a an end to an arms race across the strait. Of course it's not in Taiwan's best interests to have China bring the weight of its military on it; do you think we like receiving threats of death for the fun of it? Sadly, we're never going to see a report that says, "Taiwan President Chen Shua-Bien has called for peace with China."

Save the 'we own you' rhetoric if you want to talk; it's simply counter-productive. Talks without any pre-conditions are good - what's the worst that could come out of it? China's refusal to talk to the current ruling party of Taiwan is as stupid as the US' refusal to talk with "hostile" nations. You want independence? Fine. You want unification? Also fine. But let the people who actually *live* on the island have a voice, or else I'm not buying this "peaceful rise" crap.

Peace offer? Hmm... I remember back in 20th century, a certain dictator from Germany made an offer of peace to Poland. We may know what happened next. I am reluctant to use Nazi analogies, especially since they're tossed around so casually regarding Iran which is about as far from Nazi Germany as could be, at least in terms of military strength relative to the United States. But hanging Taiwan out to draw like this is simply a disgrace for the international media. If your cause is just, you shouldn't have to lie about it.

/rant