Check this out. I think someone at AP actually submitted this to Topix.net causing it to come up on top of stories there. Not sure. But check out the wording:
“Practice has shown that the separation causes harm to both sides and unification brings a win-win situation”
China’s president called Saturday for closer business ties with Taiwan to help squelch the self-ruled island’s pro-independence movement as he met with a former Taiwanese opposition leader.
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That’s not a quote. That is AP calling Taiwan a “self-ruled island.”
Is anyone from Annette Lu’s office reading this? Tell her.
I wish I could slap up the side of the head the AP twitterass that wrote that copy. But the lovely couple in the photo? Thanks for making the DPP’s jobs so easy. :bravo:
I don’t understand, are you saying that Taiwan’s not self ruled? Annette Lu personally got a lot of political capital from the other report, so it’s no surprise she went for it.
I don’t see how this could be a win-win situation for Taiwan.
Personnel exchanges: I do believe that Taiwan is already at capacity for sending “personnel” to China. The only personnel exchanges could be an influx of people coming into Taiwan.
Economic exchanges: Taiwan invests quite heavily in China at the present time through direct and indirect investment. The economic exchanges that could come about are sure to be a 'win" for China, but Hu never mentions how it could be a “win” for Taiwan, except that it would curb the independentalists.
Notice first that Taiwan appears to be the only self-ruled island in the world.
And see how this phrase creeps into widespread news reports only in bursts, at certain times, usually 4 to 6 times in a given year. It can usually be traced to a Reuters or AP story, from which the phrased may be reproduced in several differing reports, sometimes not even on the same main topic.
But there are long stretches of months where journalists strangely never chance to use the phrase on their own, until it suddenly appears again.
Has anyone ever described Canada as a self-ruled country? How about Quebec as a self-ruled province? To use a term such as this implies that there is an alternative state of NOT being self-ruled, which would be federally ruled perhaps, and that this alternative condition should be more “normal” since otherwise there would be no need to note the self-ruling bit.
I think the Taiwan Society or some other group could consider suing AP and Reuters over this. They may not succeed, but it would be a worthwhile fight that might draw attention and thus promote understanding of China’s aggression toward Taiwan.
