President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said he hopes that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Youth League can produce a person like Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). In saying this, Ma is himself becoming increasingly similar to Hu. In terms of anti-democratic and anti-Japanese sentiment and singing praises for communist autocracy, Ma and Hu are now almost comrades who dance to the same tune.
On the Diaoyutai (釣魚台) issue, Hu permitted angry youths in China to express anti-Japanese sentiment to demonstrate the importance China places on issues of sovereignty.
But Hu is playing politics — the Diaoyutai islets are only 4km² in size. If China holds sovereignty in high regard, why would it sign an agreement with Moscow to waive its claim to land that was taken away by Russia to the equivalent of 360,000 Diaoyutais?
The same goes for Ma. If the KMT considers sovereignty to be important, why does it not pursue the 9.6 million square kilometers of territory that belonged to the Republic of China that is under communist control?
Ma’s approval of anti-Japanese sentiment is also a game aimed at diverting attention from the fact that his inauguration was closely followed by a huge drop in the stock market, hikes in oil, gaffes by his appointees and a manifest lack of political ability.
In his annual comments on the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Ma praised China’s rescue efforts after the Sichuan earthquake.
What does the earthquake have to do with Tiananmen? The massacre was mass murder.
Besides, in the crucial 72 hours that followed the earthquake, Hu’s government refused assistance that was offered by other countries, including Taiwan. It is difficult to ascertain just how many people lost their lives under rubble because of the delay in assistance. Still, this is another form of murder. Disregard for life because of ideology is the most sinful act of an autocratic power. But Ma lacked the sense to take this into account.
Even more outrageous is the fact that Ma once won the admiration of Chinese democracy activists for condemning the massacre. Immediately after his inauguration, however, Ma said nothing of substance.
Some Chinese writers were outraged and this is perfectly understandable. Beijing-based author Liu Zili (劉自立) decried Ma’s fawning over Beijing and said his stance on the Tiananmen Square Massacre as debauched.
Liao Tien-chi (廖天琪), the editor of Observer (觀察), a magazine published by the China Information Center, said that Ma’s praise for China made his blood boil. A Mainlander who grew up in Taiwan, Liao wrote that it was pitiful for the Taiwanese people to have given their fate over to someone like Ma, and that Ma’s speech on the anniversary of the massacre made him feel as if Taiwanese needed an elegy to lament their new president.
Pu Ta-chung (卜大中), chief writer at the Chinese-language Apple Daily, offered up more severe language. He said Ma’s address on the anniversary of Tiananmen substituted the earthquake for the issues of democracy and human rights, in what amounted to a sleight of hand.
On Ma’s praise for media liberalization in China, Pu retorted that the government should not be intervening in the media in the first place, so “liberalization” shouldn’t be an issue; praise for “liberalization” was thus worthless. Pu likened the situation to a criminal who is praised for merely raping when he is accustomed to raping and pillaging.
Ma’s fawning over China can be readily pictured in the mind. It can even be understood.
Yet his emulation of Hu so soon after his inauguration leaves one flabbergasted.
Cao Changqing is a writer based in the US.
TRANSLATED BY ANGELA HONG
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