Shocked by Chinese Taipei

A squirrel on the NCKU campus.

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

Just last week the President and his KMT cronies were hailing the use of Zhonghua Taipei (Chinese Taipei) to designate Taiwan in the State media in China for the Olympics as a major diplomatic victory. And then today the Taipei Times announced that CCTV had used Zhongguo Taipei (China Taipei).

The Presidential Office yesterday expressed “shock” over China’s description of taekwondo Olympic gold medalist Chu Mu-yen (朱木炎) as being from Zhongguo Taibei, but stopped short of criticizing Beijing.

.....

On Friday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said official Chinese media had stopped referring to Taiwan as Zhongguo Taibei (中國台北, Taipei, China), using instead Zhonghua Taibei (中華台北, Chinese Taipei), calling the development a diplomatic victory.

Wang yesterday declined to speculate on whether Beijing would repeat the “technical error” while Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) is attending the Games.

Now, I know dear readers, that you are nodding to yourselves: "See? We knew those Chinese would renege on the deal faster than you can say USS Kitty Hawk." Alas, I fear they are keeping the deal...just not the deal that had been openly arranged between Beijing and the government of President Jellyspine Ma....

...for you see, had this been a DPP government, we wouldn't be fighting over Zhongguo or Zhonghua. We'd be drawing the line at Taiwan. So guess what? The CCP and the KMT have neatly arranged it so that everyone in Taiwan is now committed to Chinese Taipei!

That didn't take long, did it?

The term Taiwan has vanished from the lexicon of the sovereignty debate and will from now on be used solely to placate the domestic masses. No doubt it will be resurrected briefly for six weeks in 2012. In the meantime, we've become something like part of China. Not quite there, but this death by a thousand cuts diplomacy is really quite slick. Too bad the KMT can't manage the domestic economy as well as it can handle dismantling all that the DPP fought for over the last eight years.

The second use of this Name Game controversy was obscuring another one: notice that there was almost no local debate over the order in which Taiwan would march in the opening ceremonies. This is classic KMT strategy -- invent/use one controversy to obscure a DPP success or a KMT failure. Taiwan is now marching in the Cs, right after the Central African Republic and right before -- you guessed it -- China Hong Kong and China Macao. Feiren observed to me the other day: remember the Olympic Torch debate that had the Torch coming into Taiwan from a place that wasn't China? The order of Taiwan in the ceremony replicates the Torch path. Only thanks to the noisy controversy about noises, nobody really protested (except for one of Taiwan's Olympic athletes the other day. Someone gets it....and the DPP, of course).

Speaking of the Beijing Olympics, many observers have pointed out how China's use of the Torch to signal the vassalage of the states it passed through replicates Nazi Germany's invention and use of the Torch. But another Nazi-Beijing connection came out today with the story of how Albert Speer Jr, the son of the Nazi production czar, designed the Beijing Olympic venue with his father's plans in mind. Further commentary will now cease, since we have violated Godwin's law most severely....

[Taiwan]