The leaders of
China and Taiwan will meet Saturday on the neutral ground of Singapore, breaking
70 years of hostility. The last such meeting came in 1945, when
Chiang Kai-shek got together with Mao Zedong. That was four years
before Mao’s liberation of the Mainland
There are many
reasons why leaders from different lands get together to chat; the best reason
is to insure peace and prosperity for the people who live under their rule. The
worst reason is to make their rule tighter.
The meeting today
between Ma Ying-Jeou and Xi Jun-Ping has little to do with insuring peace or
increasing prosperity. Just the fact that the President of Taiwan can pick up
and meet a foreign leader without approval of the people or prior consent from
the legislature reveals clearly how the KMT, despite the rhetoric about
"democracy" after the 38 year-long martial law era ended, has
little democracy at all.
The people of Taiwan
are observers in this farcical meeting of leaders as they suffer under the
reality of neo-liberal austerity making the full-time jobs with living wages
impossible. As China and the U.S. divvy up what they can get from Taiwan, they
subject this small island to more pollution, overuse and destruction of its
scenic spots.
People who love
Taiwan, those who would claim to be supporters of independence, are cowards;
they dare not fight for what they want. The premature birth, and death, of the
"Sunflower Movement," co-opted by the DPP in this phony two-party
system, was for their own political gains; not one youthful demonstrator got an
increase in salary or a job for their troubles. Now the KMT has an opportunity
for political gains in this meeting of their leader, Ma, with Xi
Jun-Ping.
Who are the real enemies of Taiwan,
the ones that have made them, again, second-class citizens in their own
homeland? The Taiwanese people can only blame themselves.
Let the farce continue; it is
inevitable, but it is not enviable. As the workers of China continue to pass
their Taiwanese neighbors' level of income and living standard, perhaps it is
better that a People's Republic usurp this last of the twentieth century ruling
fascist powers and impose their government on Taiwan; remove the last insult of
Western interference in China's progressive affairs. However, there is no
improvement in the standard of living for working people on the horizon across
the Taiwan Strait.
The Taiwanese people have to continue
educating themselves, and be themselves, refusing to cave in to cultural
erosion and foreign domination. This meeting today between two foreign leaders
claiming Taiwan as their own is irrelevant.
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