The Senkakus Irritant Redux

She came out into an alley in Changhua city to challenge me.

This little missive to the Washington Times shows how the KMT hopes to use the Senkakus to fire "nationalism" in Taiwan. Written by an advisor to the overseas compatriots commission, its history is bogus, but note how it deploys Taiwan and Taiwanese....

The Senkaku Islands lie less than 62 miles from Taiwan and it is a historical fact the Senkaku Islands constitutes an entity with Taiwan’s territory. The Taiwan government, on behalf of its Taiwanese people, claims ownership of the Senkaku Islands. Japan’s argument is not even worthy of refuting and Japan’s claim that its ownership is recognized by the United States is also shaky.

The article refers only once to the ROC. One of the standard moves of KMT political rhetoric is to conflate the ROC and Taiwan in order to harness Taiwanese feelings of "being Taiwanese" and identifying with Taiwan in the service of the ROC and its goals. The Administration is also trying to stoke anti-Japanese feeling in the finest traditions of Chinese nationalism -- good luck with that, Taiwanese are absolutely mad about things Japanese. Notice that in addition to responding with pro forma historical nonsense about who owns the Senkakus/Diaoyutai, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also brought up the comfort women issue again this week.

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Daily Links:

• Japanese Ambassador's car attacked in Beijing
• Kukutsu: Jungle POW camp
• Commonwealth on everyone's favorite city, Tainan
• AsiaTimes on the slumping economy: "That Taiwan's general economic data is far from being ideal is due to the global slowdown as well as Taiwanese manufacturers' excessive clustering in China," said Hu Sheng-Cheng, an economist at Academia Sinica, Taiwan's most prestigious research institution."

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