Sunday, September 18, 2005

MeiZhong Tai also reponds to Sun Bin...

I had previously responded to the post of Sun Bin's on the weapon's purchases in this post. Excellent response to Sun Bin from MZT also appeared this week. Kudos!

BTW, Sun, you have a list of complaints, one of which is:

When there is a dispute between Japan and China on the East China Sea EEZ, the West blames China for aggression, regardless of the fact that China has legitimate claim based on UN LOS, or that Japan's claim in based on a disputable claim on another piece of rock

The EEZ issue seems to favor China -- quite true. But either the Senkakus belong to Taiwan, or they belong to Japan (I'm not entering that debate). But under no circumstances do they belong to China. And the Senkaku debate beautifully falsifies your claim that democracy will mellow China: both Taiwan and Japan are democracies, however imperfect, and neither has shown any willingness to back down on the claim to a clump of uninhabited islets. Whatever makes you think China will thus give up any claim to Taiwan in the unlikely event that it becomes a democracy?

2 comments:

Sun Bin said...

Hey, we agreed on the fact that one shall not assume daioyu's/senkakus belong to either nation (i said it was disputed).

all i was 'complaining' was that both sides should be treated equally in this dispute, which is not what I saw in the some western media (major newspapers do give a fair coverage about the underlying facts though).

btw, china's claim to diaoyu is via its claim to 'taiwan province/sar'. so ...

---

and yes, you are right that a democratic china may still claim taiwan. and that is not what i have claimed. what i meant is it will be hard to justify a war against a 67% popular vote, if china govt is elected by universal suffrage itself.

i suspect there won't be a war. more likely the vote for independence may not reach 67% if china is a democracy and behave more nicely to taiwan.

in any case, the danger of war will be greatly reduced. and it is worth the wait.

Sun Bin said...

"china's claim to diaoyu is via its claim to 'taiwan province/sar'. so ..."
... the best strategy for taiwan (i am only saying that this is to taiwanese people's best interests, not neccesarily who they belong to.) is to team up with mainland china on the diaoyu issue, then "WAIT"...whether it is taiwan province or taiwan "nation", they can claim their share of the resources (there is no dispute between zhejiang and taiwan about this)