{"id":4923,"date":"2003-12-03T21:08:03","date_gmt":"2003-12-04T04:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4923"},"modified":"2003-12-03T21:08:03","modified_gmt":"2003-12-04T04:08:03","slug":"unification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/03\/unification.html","title":{"rendered":"Unification?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, eager to give the German economy a boost <\/a>by selling arms (or maybe a nuclear power plant) to China (if only those annoying EUrocrats would lift the Tiananmen-era embargo), is more than happy to make his potential customers happy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saying that Germany firmly supports China’s opposition to Taiwan’s independence, Chancellor Gerhard Schr\u00f6der sided with Beijing on Wednesday as China threatened to invade Taiwan in case of a referendum on independence.
\nOn the last day of a three-day visit to China, German Chancellor Schr\u00f6der said he shared the country’s Communist leadership’s views on a united China. “I believe that China is one country and has to remain as such,” the chancellor told students in southern China’s Canton province.
\nJust like China had always supported German reunification, “it goes without saying that we will do the same,” Schr\u00f6der said.<\/p>\n

Except, of course, China would have preferred that East Germany “unified” West Germany into itself.<\/p>\n

Granted that the US has (shamefully, if pragmatically) supported a “One China” policy, it has done so while continuing to promise military protection of Taiwan if China decides to implement such a policy unilaterally and militarily. <\/p>\n

Schr\u00f6der’s tacit support for Chinese saber-rattling, though, is an odd thing for the leader of a democracy to tout. And, as Daimnation points out<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Amazing, isn’t it? The international community makes such a big noise about the “inherent right of self-determination” in the context of the Israel\/Palestine dispute. Even most Israelis and their supporters, except for the far-right fringe, concede that the Palestinians should have a state someday. This “right” is so fundamental, evidently, that the Palestinians are justfied in murdering Jewish children when it’s denied.
\nAnd half a world away, the Taiwanese have actually gone ahead and built <\/i>a thriving, prosperous society, away from the claws of the Tiananmen Square murderers – and the world wants to take it away, even when the Chinese dictatorship threatens a brutal war.<\/p>\n

It does make one wonder. At what point does a de facto <\/i>territorial and political division — one that is 54 years old — become accepted as the Way Things Are? Granted, the PRC is never going to accept it, but that the rest of the world kowtows to that attitude, while accepting territorial divisions and realignments elsewhere (though not often — the post-WWII unwritten law is, “Thou Shallt Not Change Borders”), is both puzzling and sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, eager to give the German economy a boost by selling arms (or maybe a nuclear power plant) to China (if only those annoying EUrocrats would lift the Tiananmen-era…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":329,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/05\/01\/good_news.html","url_meta":{"origin":4923,"position":0},"title":"Good news","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 1-May-03 5:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Wonder why I don't hear anyone celebrating that this sort of thing didn't happen: Not so long ago, prominent German politicians were outdoing each other forecasting worst-case scenarios for the...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3542,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/10\/30\/with_two_you_ge.html","url_meta":{"origin":4923,"position":1},"title":"With two you get spam roll","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 30-Oct-02 10:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"China is planning to eases restrictions on the \".cn\" domain. 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There's more to long-term economic success than being the cheapest manufacturer (though that's not a bad way to get things kickstarted).2. A plutocracy (especially one with an autocratic layer) has certain efficiencies but long-term limits\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}