Dianne Feinstein on Taiwan

From time to time people drop by here and ask me if it bothers me that so many of my allies on Taiwan are political conservatives. And my considered answer is that it bothers me not one whit. What bothers me is not that conservatives are right, but that liberals and progressives are so very, very wrong when it comes to Taiwan.

Take Dianne Feinstein for example. Feinstein spoke on Thursday at a meeting of the Committee of 100, an invitation-only club of influential Asian-Americans. According to one news report, Feinstein ripped Taiwan:

Feinstein, who in 1979 as mayor of San Francisco brokered a sister-city relationship between San Francisco and Shanghai, blasted Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian in her speech. Chen, she said, has taken what she characterized as a provocative and belligerent stance toward mainland China, all for his personal political gain, in hopes that he can be hailed as the savior who stands up to Communist China.

Feinstein is merely regurgitating Communist Chinese agitprop. It's sad enough when some freelance stringer for one of the major news organizations does it, but it is both despicable and pathetic when a US Senator chooses to call a US ally "belligerent." Feinstein has long shilled for China -- as the National Review pointed out several years ago when Feinstein was first mentioned as possible Vice Presidential candidate for Al Gore, and her husband Richard Blum is a major investor there:

In 1986, Feinstein and Jiang teamed up to create corporations that would encourage business between San Francisco and Shanghai. Blum became a director of one of these groups, Shanghai Pacific Partners. Feinstein even promoted the company in a 1987 article for the San Francisco Business Times. The Shanghai government then launched a joint venture with Blum to construct a $30 million, 28-story apartment building. Blum says he lost money on the deal, but the experience hardly turned him off to sending good money after bad-more than $100 million in various Chinese investments since his wife became a senator, in fact.

However, there is no mention of her close business ties in the news articles that have appeared in the US (Mercury News and SF Chronicle). The Taipei Times merely mentioned in passing that she and Jiang Zemin were old pals dating back to the days when she made San Francisco and Shanghai sister cities. It is no wonder the mainstream media is so mistrusted in the US. Meanwhile the SF paper goes on to say:

She praised mainland China -- which regards Taiwan as a renegade province -- for declining to take Chen's bait, while simultaneously calling on Beijing to dismantle the hundreds of ballistic missiles that it has positioned opposite Taiwan in a clear military threat to the island.

In the space of a few paragraphs, Feinstein praises China's "restraint" for not blowing Taiwan to smithereens -- as if she thinks they had every right to -- and condemns the President of a longtime ally for acting solely for his own political gain -- instead of praising his support for democracy here in Taiwan -- while concealing her own longstanding links to Chinese elites (though they must have been known to everyone present). It is clear that Beijing is writing her script, for the focus on Chen, as being the end-all and be-all of Taiwan independence, betrays a Chinese source (a more measured position would have condemned Taiwan independence). Feinstein also accused her fellow Congress critters of being paranoid:

In a question-and-answer session, Feinstein said there is a "mind-set in Congress'' that "China is destined to become an enemy of the U.S.'' She said this kind of thinking is dangerous, and called for more "high-level conversations'' between China and the United States.

I am all for more jaw-jaw between the US and China, but I would like to see it conducted by people who don't have nine-figure investments there, and who have a more balanced view of events, and a more respectful attitude toward a longtime US ally.

It is interesting to contemplate how Feinstein's comments will be received in China. Everyone at the gathering had to have known that she is in Jiang Zemin's pocket, yet the papers reported that listeners were surprised by her comments, though their content could not have surprised anyone who knew her. Rather, they must have been surprised that any US senator would have uttered such strongly pro-China comments in public, in front of a gathering of Asians, comments that emphasized that the US has no obligation to defend Taiwan (true) and belittled Taiwan. Feinstein is known to have aspirations for higher office. I hope she doesn't get there; she's already bad enough where she is.

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