[Fat Pang]

adarian's post explaining what happened to the administration of Taiwan post WW2 is factually spot on. The reason that Mao and his gang of murderous thug's were able to kick the KMT out of mainland China rests largely on the KMT's military ineptitude and rapacious exploitation of the areas that were under it's control.

This behaviour was repeated in Taiwan and still remains a bone of contention in comtempoaray Taiwanese politics today. Opposition parties, for instance, have demanded the removal of the portrait of Chiang-Kai-Shek from the national assembly and an investigation into the KMT's behaviour in the 50's and 60's where abuse, terror and torture were routinely used.

What happened on the mainland was much worse.

China however rarely refers to the facts unearthed by adarian and more routinely refers to it's Imperial heritage when laying claim to the island. This manages to avoid the thorny questions of Japanese occupancy prior to WW2 and the unfortunate but very pertinent fact that no-one in Taiwan actually wants to be part of the PRC.

More routinely, China states "Taiwan is an inalienable part of China", and leaves it as that.

In supposing that China has greater historical claim to the island, we are ignoring the wishes of the Taiwanese people themselves, who have steadfastly refused to countenance the possibility of joining the 'motherland'.

I deplore the post-colonial division of land across the world, a lot of which was settled pre-potsdam. This resulted in an awful lot of straight lines as borders with no thought of cultural,social,ethnic or linguistic divides. Whenever you look at a map and see a straight line for a border you invariably look at a country blighted by civil war or border disputes.

If we are to be consistent on this issue then in deploring this post-colonial border drawing we also have to support national self-determination. This means defending from aggression those who have expressed a wish to remain as they are. Without concern for the economic consequences of doing so, I might add. It disgusts me to see how China uses the potential of it's markets to browbeat it's way through international negotiation on many issues.

It's behaviour in Tibet, it's behaviour in the Uigyur lands in the north west of China, it's behaviour towards the Falun Gong, underground spiritual groups of many faiths, it's comprehensive censorship of the internet, written media, television media, it's denial of democratic rights to the people of Hong Kong in defiance of the Sino-British agreement, it's behaviour over the Spratly's/Daioyu islands have all convinced me that if the people of Taiwan have expressed a wish to remain apart from this bunch of robber Baron capitalists in Beijing then they should be allowed to do so.

As far as a Pax-americana is concerned, I just don't see one. I see the expression of national self interest writ large and backed up by the ability to project force around the globe. This ordinarily leads to a series of unfortunate events particularly when oil is involved.

I would like us to be more consistent too adarian. If it's good enough to get rid of Saddam, then we should also be getting rid of Mugabe, Assad, Kim junior and the Saudi Royal family. We should have supported the people of East Timor, Tibet, Rwanda amongst others. We shouldn't be dealing with China until they agree to stop torturing, abusing and killing their own people. We certainly shouldn't have given them the olympics.

As for the French, they are prostitutes for the main chance and the biggest most unprincipled bunch of moral cowards I've seen for quite sometime. Their latest ruse is to sell arms to the Chinese in contradiction of the EU arms ban.

How on earth a serially defeated nation like France ever got on the security council is beyond me.