Taiwan and the "Jews of Asia". (Letters).

SIR: Paul Monk's article on Taiwan (November 2001) was an interesting attempt to resolve what is now a long-running issue. It was, however, flawed on a number of levels. The first is the suggestion that China offer Taiwan de facto independence. For whatever reason the voters of Taiwan have not shown any interest in formal independence so far and there is no reason to think they will any time soon. Whether or not China's cack-handed efforts to bully the Taiwanese electorate worked or not, the fact is that the voters did provide China with the result it wanted--a victory for the One China Guomindang candidate Lee Tenghui. In 2000 the DDP's Chen Shuibian got in with under 40 per cent of the vote (much the same as in 1996) because the One China vote was split between the Guomindang and James Soong, an even more pro-One China candidate. Even then Chen promised not to declare independence any time soon in order to calm voters' fears. The fact is the Taiwanese could declare and defend their independence if they wanted to regardless of what anyone else, even China, wanted. So far they have not wanted to. What possible rationale could there be for the Chinese to offer them what they have repeatedly rejected at the polls?

The second major flaw is the common "liberal" assumption that everyone in the world is a reasonable sort of person. It is just not true that China's problems in Tibet, for instance, result from the failure to respect Tibet's autonomy. From 1951 to 1959 the ...