Toadying Up

'Provincial' President Ma (Lord Haw Haw) has once again proven that he lives in a Beijing pleasing Chinese bubble by absolutely unnecessary and self-denigrating comments he made yesterday to the effect that Taiwan was a 'province'. Witness thus:

Ma told Texas Governor Rick Perry during a meeting at the Presidential Office that the country’s relationship with Texas was a close one.

“In 1988, Texas and Taiwan Province became sister states,” Ma said. “Over the past two years, we have engaged in many exchanges in technology, culture, education and agriculture.” (Here Ma was technically correct since in 1988 Taiwan Provincial Government entered a sister relationship with Texas)

Ma thanked the Texas legislature for passing a resolution last year reaffirming the “sister state and sister province” relationship. ( ... but it is now 2010, not 1988. Ma seems to have forgotten this, instead choosing to live in the make-believe world that the period of 1991 to 2008 in Taiwan never happened)

However, Ma’s description ran counter to the one stated in Resolution 81(R) HR 1593 passed by the Texas House of Representatives in June last year, which states: “Texas and Taiwan are celebrating the 21st anniversary of their Sister State relationship in June 2009.” (Why let a little thing called reality get in the way of a hugely anti-democratic notion of Taiwan as part of a Greater China?)

Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠), a research fellow at the Taiwan Brain Trust think tank, said Ma’s logic made sense under the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution, which views China as part of its territory.

“But it is impractical and runs counter to political reality,” he said.

In the eyes of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Liu said the ROC was long subjugated when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lost the Chinese civil war in 1949. For the DPP, Taiwan is an independent sovereignty whose current name is the ROC, he said.

Liu said he did not have any problem with the sister-state relationship between Taiwan and Texas in terms of trade. What worried him, however, was Ma’s backtracking to the former KMT administration’s “unrealistic” mindset that China is part of the ROC and the relationship between Taiwan and China is one of region to region.

Well said. Having just finished a masters thesis on Taiwan's sovereignty, a whole section of which is dedicated to Ma's 'rewinding of the clock', I'm spoiled for choice of evidence to present by which to prove that 'President' Ma is to Taiwan's hard fought-for popular national democratic sovereignty what President Bush was to raising US diplomatic prestige and respect around the world. No wonder so many people are calling him 'regional leader Ma' and his popularity remains at less than 30%. Toadying really doesn't get much more toady than this. Roll on 2012 and the ROC centennial will likely be only celebrated by Ma, King and the inner circle of KMT quislings. The Taiwanese meanwhile are no doubt starting to think about making Ma a one-term President - can they afford to do otherwise?.