Previous AIT Head Opinions About US Military Visits, Call Girls and More

Talks about US and China and US military port visits.

And then in same article he connects his Taiwan memories of US military visits with call girls. Doesn’t he have any good memories about Taiwan?

Why is he talking about call girls? I can’t tell if it’s the musings of an old man or a real attempt to stir up an issue. Odd.

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What about his statement below that:

“It was particularly distressing to me back then that many of the young girls offering their charms to American sailors were little older than I was at the time.”

He seems to be just remembering what he saw. It’s reality and a fact. It happened and continues to happen in all ports of call around the world.

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He’s not exactly making the case for resuming port calls.

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Steve Young’s Wikipedia page indicates that he lived here as a child (specifically, in Kaohsiung) from 1963-1965. I’m assuming he or his people wrote his Wikipedia entry and that it’s true. He would have been 12-15 years old then. That puts the discussion of girls “not much older than” him in some context.

I don’t doubt his recollections in the slightest. But yeah, it is a bit odd that he would bring this issue up in the context of his article, which is a critical take on a plausible-deniability-laden outburst by China’s No 2 diplomat in DC threatening to invade Taiwan if US Navy ships pay port calls here (as we have done frequently–and with no widely reported increase in underage prostitution–in Hong Kong all along).

But you’re right. It’s weird. His reminiscences of being shocked by underage prostitutes serving visiting US sailors 45 years ago does indeed distract readers from what appears to have been the critical point of his editorial.

I too was eager to attribute this to the ramblings of a demented old man, until I reflected upon my own age and started to think that maybe he’s just wise, perhaps even wiser than me. After all, he’s got a PhD.

So here’s a theory: Dr. Young’s intended audience may actually be on the other side of the Strait, where knowledge of post-19th Century history, and especially post-1949 history, is appalling. He may be trying to let them know, in a face-saving sort of way, that actually the US military was based in Taiwan for decades, and that American Navy ships have in fact moored off Kaohsiung within relatively recent memory.

Said visitations are a fact, and along with that fact are some dismal anecdotes that are also factual. The former (we had bases here not so long ago) may be easier to accept if delivered with a spoonful of the latter (our sailors did bad things).

Either that, or Stephen Young needs an editor.

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Belated thanks for the link, @tango42. Lately I haven’t been keeping up with the news as much as I used to.

I remember Stephen Young from back when he was with the AIT.

I recall his efforts to get the Legislative Yuan to pass a stalled arms budget:

Enjoyed the column!

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That was all a bit of b******* by the US.

Even at that time America would not sell Taiwan new fighter airplanes or new offensive capabilities. Part of the reason it was stalled in Taiwan is because the items being purchased were not what Taiwan wanted because the US would not sell to them. So Taiwan politicians complain because they’re spending a lot of money but not getting what they want or need, only what the USA will sell.

It’s still the same today, the US still will not sell Taiwan the offensive capabilities that Taiwan wants or needs. And the USA will not support Taiwan either politically or with the technology for Taiwan to build their own. But the US still complains that Taiwan isn’t doing enough.

I’ve been waiting to see if Trump decides to sell them something like new Fighters but noooooo.

Can’t imagine why.

Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, and Lien Chan, the leader of the opposition Nationalist Party in Taiwan, formally ended decades of hostility with a nationally televised handshake Friday and pledged to work together to undermine Taiwan’s independence movement.

Taiwanese media, citing a Chinese media report quoting PLA Major General Luo Yuan (羅援), said a Taiwanese speaker recently told a gathering of retired generals from both sides of the Strait in China: “From now on, we should no longer separate the ROC Army and the PLA. We are all China’s army.”

Quoting PLA Major General Luo Yuan (羅援), the Chinese-language newspaper the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported that Hsia [Ying-chou] said during the forum that the ROC Armed Forces and the PLA, while having different ideas, shared the same goal: promoting unification of all “Chinese people.”

Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) yesterday met with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Beijing at the annual forum between the KMT and Chinese Communist Party (CCP), during which he proposed that cross-strait matters be tackled under the banner of “one country, two areas (一國兩區).”

Ma discussed the concept one day after China’s Taiwan Affairs Office commented on his May 20 inaugural speech. [PRC] Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Yang Yi (楊毅) reiterated the “one China” framework and said the relationship between the two sides was not “nation to nation.”

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