Another China-Taiwan connection

ARTICLE: Taiwan, China to launch direct shipping links, AP, December 14, 2008

Small but important sign of the future in Asia.

(Thanks: Mike Maynard)

Comments

[Robert]

It's important, but what's also important is the precipitous loss of civil liberties as the KMT has decided to push this forward at all costs. Remember, all of these negotiations were going on between the DPP and Beijing, but the DPP demanded more compromise from Beijing. The KMT doesn't seem to be doing the same.

Despite his obvious faults, with Chen as president, you couldn't get detained by the police for carrying a Tibetan, or even a Taiwanese, flag--in TAIWAN.

To be clear, I am neither for unification or against it. What is important, though, is that the rights and liberties of the 23 million people over here in Taiwan--among the freest people in Asia--are respected.

[Tom Barnett]

What works in Taiwan's favor is Beijing's willingness to proceed very slowly.

[William R. Cumming]

My guess is the real relationship of cooperation allows both China and Taiwan to focus on other issues. Both are tied up in the world-wide economic collapse brought on almost exclusively by the US and its impositon of corrupt financial systems and processes on the global scheme of things. We have now forfeited two of the several kinds of leadership for the indefinite future. First, skillful employment of organized armed violence, and Second, skillful employment of financial organized violence. In case the term violence does not register as accurate when people starve, die, or are killed deliberately by a single nation state that qualifies as violence to me. The real question I have is will the new "Globalization" be a concensus internationally as to whether to treat the US as a pariah or as a useful member of the international community. That is why I think OBAMA will be an international President not so focused domestically and this will forever change the fiction that skillful management of international relationships by the US takes second fiddle to domestic management. But as always I could be wrong! But if I am right, Governors lacking in international relationships and experience and expertise need not apply to be President because the American people will have finally wised up as to their adverse impacts on others. Watch what we do not what we say. They could be aligned but unlikely given American mythology.

[Jonathan Fu]

I believe Beijing is willing to go as fast (politically) as Taiwan is preparing to go... DPP has resisted any and all meaningful progress talks with Beijing in the past 8 years that now is the time for Beijing and Taipei to resume. DPP may have talked with Beijing, but as we know, talk is cheap without tangible results. The new KMT government actualized more in months than DPP has in the past eigfht years... that's the fact. Ultimately, economics is going to triumph the old politically bickering between Beijing and Taipei... one only needs to give it some times.

[Tom Barnett]

In the end, what China does to integrate HK and Taiwan becomes the beginning model of the Asian Union, methinks.