Is Taiwan all that peaceful towards China?
Lau Guan Kim  Updated: 2004-09-27 08:42

When one considers Chen Shuibian promulgation of the Forward Policy of fighting on mainland China, can we say he is a pacifist?

Look at any angle, the island under the Taidu (secessionists) is not being threatened by China one-way: Taiwan revs up the engine of war on China by revealing innate desire to take on China, even without the aid of the US.

The recent open courting of Japan by Chen Shuibian on the matter of anti-submarine warfare of the Special Defence Force (SDF) of Japan shows how tenuous Chen Shuibian's concept of not wanting to harm China, that he is a pacifist with the interest of the people of Taiwan as his main concern.

They notch up the tension even more with enticing Japan to come into the Strait imbroglio. Clearly the message is they want Japan as the Mikado of Taiwan rather then embracing reunification as Chinese of One China.

Are the Taidu ashamed of being Chinese? If you look at the tourists from Taiwan, they come dressed no different from the Japanese. There is this 'gurupu' about the whole mimicry - what has been observed as the predilection to group behaviour in the Japanese that psychologists termed group syndrome.

Look at the other way round, Taiwan is threatening China. It went further when recently the island government's mouthpiece Taipei Times said it had to go nuclear, giving as its reasons the uncertainty of direct US involvement.

What is that? Something new? Taiwan was caught years back covertly developing the nuclear bomb until the US put a stop to that.

Taipei Times talks as if there is hitherto no nuclear ambition in Taiwan.

Why go nuclear, unless you want to challenge China and attack the Chinese people?

Clearly, the Taidu consider Taiwanese are not Chinese.

Harking back to 1981, Israel bombed the Osiraq nuclear plant near Baghdad in an effort to thwart Iraq's nuclear programme as a threat to the Israelis. Even now, there is talk by Israel of doing the same to Iran.

Ostensibly the US wants us to believe it is even-handed. Just as Washington wants a curb on nuclear proliferation in East Asia, and in as much as its hostile stand towards Pyongyang on that issue, it must be seen to put the lid on Taipei's unrequited nuclear ambition.

The slip here is that the secessionists never realise its own grand design laid bare. The Taidu want to take on China with US involvement, but this innate desire to smash China by offering the bait 'democracy' for all China if the mainland is defeated not enough to dupe the Americans, then they would want to go nuclear.

Precisely the Americans do not want to be duped or dragged into a war not to the national interest of the US. It was not so much as the US wanting to show its even-handedness; it wanted more to prevent the type of action it approved of Israel's when the latter bombed the Osiraq nuclear plant near Baghdad.

So if China takes pre-emptive measures against taiwan's nuclear ambition, the US has no moral ground to condemn China. It realises that such step by China may trigger a Strait War involving the US not to its liking or timing.

Either way, the Taidu factor in the supposedly win-win scenario for taiwan's secession.

Going nuclear will bristle the mainland Chinese to take action. This is not punitive but pre-emptive, a right that the US military might enshrines in its national manifest to strike first and ask questions later.

But be prepared the Taidu will want to make political mileage out of any attack by China under the circumstances.

Concomitantly, the hawks in the US will want the US to defend 'democracy'.

We wait for the period 2006 to 2008 to see the surreptitious plots of the Taidu gaining crescendo. It looks as if that is the time they will rev up the tension when China is busy with the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Either China waits for the Beijing Olympics to end to make a response, or it responds immediately. It suits the Taidu fine, because they hope the delay will give the US carrier groups to amass in formidable number, if at all they succeed in duping the Americans.

The Taidu want to have their cake and eat it too. They know too well that an immediate response before or during the 2008 Beijing Olympics can dampen the success of the event by frightening participants from attending.

It certainly is diabolical of the Taidu.

The above content represents the view of the author only.

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