Taiwan, home of small, plastic objects and legislative food fights

God bless you, Taiwan.

I say this for many reasons. First is my affinity for small, plastic… God bless you, Taiwan.

I say this for many reasons. First is my affinity for small, plastic objects.

Second, my landlady and two of my roommates are Taiwanese, and they are some of the finest people I know.

Third, lawmakers in Taiwan’s parliament are doing what the cake-eating filibuster-monkeys in our own legislative houses should be doing: displaying uncontrollable rage over insane comments from the Bush administration.

While visiting China last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell irked many in Taiwan when he said, “There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy.”

The next day, Taiwanese legislators debated a military budget that would spend millions on weapons from U.S. manufacturers. A heated debate ensued between those who wanted to keep the budget and those who favored a boycott in light of Powell’s comments — a debate that ended in a food fight.

“You’ve got no shame!” Chu Fong-chih of the Nationalist Party screamed as he hurled a take-out box of chicken and rice at Chen Tsung-yi of the Democratic Progressive Party, who argued for the budget.

This is not unusual for Taiwan’s notoriously rowdy parliament, which is less “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and more “Animal House.” But last week, their unruliness was well warranted.

While campaigning for reelection, Powell’s boss, President George W. Bush, has downplayed those pesky, 2003-era reasons for invading Iraq, and instead justified the war like this:

“Freedom is on the march, and we’re more secure for it,” Bush said at a rally last Thursday. “Free societies are peaceful societies, and we believe everyone desires to live in freedom. Freedom is not America’s gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty God’s gift to each man and woman in this world.”

While it is hard to argue against so many repetitions of the word “freedom,” the millions of equally oppressed people Bush has not liberated make his argument flimsy. But the suggestion by Powell that a free, democratic nation should be annexed into the world’s largest and possibly most oppressive communist state makes his argument moronic.

For those unfamiliar with the China-Taiwan conflict, here is a brief history: At the end of the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Party of China, lead by revolutionary and frequent mural subject Mao Tse-tung, drove the democratic government to the outlying islands, and established the People’s Republic of China. Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek reestablished the Republic of China at Taiwan in 1949.

Since then, the PROC has claimed that the ROC is illegitimate and that both the mainland and the outer islands are its territory, while the ROC has claimed the opposite. Like most exes after a bitter break-up, the two have engaged in endless muted threats and bickering.

Initially, the United States recognized the ROC as China’s legitimate government. However, to maintain good relations with the PROC, a king-sized superpower, every president since Richard Nixon has walked a tightrope, recognizing both countries, opposing any extreme actions of either and taking no stance on reunification.

U.S.-China-Taiwan relations are like Christmas dinner in my family: There is an ambiguous hostility that, while unpleasant, keeps things stable.

That is why Powell’s comments are so troubling. Few U.S. leaders have even implied “Taiwan is not independent” or “does not enjoy sovereignty.” Why the change? Is North Korea such a problem that we need to offer old alliances as bargaining chips to get China to deal with Kim Jong-Il?

Taiwan is an independent, sovereign nation, and, after reforms in the 1980s, it became a model for the type of democracy that Bush is supposedly spreading around the world — minus the occasional fisticuffs and flying chicken and rice.

Powell’s comments are the most disgusting thing to be delivered from the mouth of a U.S. leader to an Asian ally since the first President Bush got sick at a state dinner and barfed in the Japanese prime minister’s lap. Yet Powell has refused to apologize and in subsequent interviews even used the dreaded ‘R’ word: reunification.

Is that what four more years of Bush will bring? A communist invasion of Taiwan that will make the U.S. invasion of Iraq seem like The Beatles’ invasion of North America? This new attitude toward Taiwan is yet another reason why Bush must go.

E-mail Nick Keppler at pnk6@pitt.edu.