Lien Chan goes to China

Incredibly beautiful and amazing light on the trip back from Lanyu last weekend.

A couple of years ago I wrote some posts on the chickenshit society. KMT heavyweight, former Premier, and twice failed KMT Presidential candidate Lien Chan offered a wonderful example during his trip to China this week... (China Post):

Ex-Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan on Tuesday echoed the idea raised recently by Chinese communist party General Secretary Xi Jinping that both sides of the Taiwan Strait should jointly write history to boost mutual understanding and cooperation.

"Using the same materials and writing history books together will not only open the way for future collaboration between historians on both sides, but it will also help promote understanding and harmony between the people," Lien said while giving a speech ahead of his meeting with Xi in Beijing -- the third between the two men.

Consider the context: just this summer were the curriculum protests, which resulted in a student suicide. These protests were in response to pro-China/KMT alterations of the curriculum. Why even bring up history curriculum? Of course it can only be to torment those kids. And Lien says: let's make the curriculum even more pro-China! That's a classic chickenshit response to a dead kid. Hey kid, we're trampling on your grave...

Lien sucked up to the PRC, and was criticized by the Presidential Office as "inappropriate" and by the Ministry of National Defense... (FocusTw)

During a meeting with Communist Party of China (CPC) General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing Tuesday, Lien said ROC troops, led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), engaged directly with Japanese troops in major battles, handing the Japanese major setbacks.

But he also contended that CPC troops, led by Mao Zedong (毛澤東), tied down the Japanese enemy behind its lines.

The Defense Ministry disagreed.

"Whether on the front lines or behind enemy lines, the ROC government led the campaign," Luo said at an event celebrating Armed Forces Day, which falls on Thursday.

My man Ben of Letters from Taiwan observed in 2005 Lien Chan went to China (there's actually a Wiki page of Pan Blue Visits to China) to conduct diplomacy which was not sanctioned by the government, but Ma said nothing. The US said it welcomed the visit, but asked that the DPP government be included in talks. The EU said nothing about the DPP but lauded the visit. According to the Wiki site, some compared it to the meeting of Rabin and Arafat, which showed that those commentators know exactly nothing about Taiwan. In fact Lien promised during the 2004 campaign to visit China as the elected President but fortunately for Taiwan, he lost.

Crucially, the two Leninist parties re-affirmed the 1992 Consensus, that cage by which they hope to imprison the DPP.

Note that Lien talked about a "Taiwan-centric identity", an interesting admission. The KMT and CCP both fear the Taiwanese identity, and the two Leninist parties are groping for a discourse framework, which, like the 1992 Consensus, can somehow imprison it. President Ma has repeatedly attempted to locate Taiwaneseness as a subculture of Chineseness, the discourse/identity strategy that Chinese expansionists have used with the Manchus, the Tibetans, and other cultures that China has overrun. But unlike those unfortunates who share a land border with the PRC, Taiwan has a Strait to keep the PRC off...
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!