Is Frank Hsieh a Moderate?

Unfortunately, David G. Brown's awful article on Frank Hsieh, which appeared three weeks ago in the CSIS newsletter out of Johns Hopkins, is now running in the Japan Times, and will likely appear in one of the local English papers soon (it was picked up by Taiwan Security.org the other day). I put together a rebuttal of its fundamental wrongness yesterday and sent it off to the CSIS for publication. If they don't publish it, I'll run it here alongside the article. How bad this article is can be gauged from this single paragraph (emphasis mine):

Third, will Hsieh continue to avoid Chen's hardline rhetoric that has convinced Beijing that the president is not someone they can deal with? The party organization believes that such rhetoric is key to mobilizing the base. One focus of their efforts is a referendum on joining the U.N. under the name Taiwan. Hsieh supports joining as Taiwan, but has not yet specifically endorsed the referendum. More moderate elements believe that a coincident referendum on Nationalist Party assets will be sufficient for mobilization. As a close campaign proceeds, Hsieh will be pressured and tempted to use hardline rhetoric. Whether he does so will be another key test.

The news here is not that someone in the US has identified the "hardline" stances of Taiwan officials as a problem for poor put-upon Beijing, the helpless victims of those dastardly democracy supporters in Taipei. The sad news is that it is now out and about in the media as if it actually said something worth listening to. Sad.

[Taiwan] [media] [US] [China]