Did anyone notice how silent Beijing is towards the political protests against the First Family’s corruption in Taiwan? So deafening that you feel like you’re floating in heaven.
This article explains it all: atimes.com/atimes/China/HK17Ad01.html
[quote]In Beijing’s eye, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian is a troublemaker. Naturally Beijing would take great pleasure in seeing the embattled Chen suffer from corruption scandals involving his family and himself.
However, so far mainland China’s official media have kept silent on this piece of “hot news” and the follow-ups in Taiwan. Only some Internet sites are allowed to dispatch tailored stories selected from the Taiwanese and Hong Kong media. The Taiwan Affairs Office under the State Council, China’s cabinet, declines to comment on Chen’s case, repeatedly saying it is a “domestic affair”.
It is apparent that Beijing is afraid that reporting Chen’s predicament in the mass media could backfire. The public might raise questions along the lines of “What can we do with official corruption?” And if Taiwan’s president could be caught, “What about our own corrupt ‘big fishes’?”…
Also, Taiwan’s media have played a key role in exposing Chen’s scandals, which may lead mainlanders to wonder when China can have the same freedom of the press in effect to supervise the behavior of party and government officials…
In terms of the amount of money involved, Chen is, indeed, a tiny fish compared with corrupt officials of lesser ranks on the mainland.
According to Chang Wen-cheng of Taiwan’s High Prosecutor’s Office, President Chen, his wife Wu Shu-chen and three aides siphoned off about US$450,000 from the public purse between 2002 and early this year.
By the corruption standards of the mainland, this is chicken feed. China’s chief statistician, Qiu Xiaohua, who has just been sacked and is still under investigation, is said to have sent his mistress no less than $6.3 million in cash taken from the Shanghai Pension Fund. How much he got for himself is anybody’s guess.
How much Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu pocketed in the massive looting of the fund is also the subject of considerable guesswork. The usual tag is “hundreds of millions” out of the $1.6 billion that has gone missing.
Corruption on the mainland is simply B-I-G. A former Shenyang mayor - small fry compared with Taiwan’s Chen Shui-bian - had no less than $6 million in gold bars walled up inside his house when party investigators came a-calling.
This year two Bank of China executives were arrested for corruption involving nothing less than $485 million.
This colossal difference in the scale of corruption between mainland officials and the petty thievery of the Taiwanese leader and his wife partly accounts for the deafening silence from Beijing on the island’s continuing political turmoil.
In normal circumstances, Beijing’s leaders might be expected gleefully to trumpet the pitfalls of democracy and publicly relish the predicament of their most hated enemy. But except for a few websites, there has been almost no mention of the upheavals in Taiwan.
Just weeks ago, Taiwan was still being held up as the example of what Chinese people can achieve under democracy, right down to massive peaceful protests without undermining the system.
That, of course, put Beijing on edge. Democracy, Western-style, is not its style. But as long as Chen Shu-bian did not declare independence, Beijing just had to tolerate it… [/quote]
But here is the most important part: [quote]The final push against a reluctant Chen may not come from the street demonstrators but from a successful prosecution of the case against his wife. Chen has promised to step down if that happens. However, given the way he has twisted and turned in the past, nothing is assured.
If Chen hangs on in spite of a conviction against his wife, he will be dealing a grievous blow to democracy - and confirm Beijing’s view that democracy in Taiwan - and in Hong Kong - is being pushed by self-serving politicians.[/quote]
CSB said he would step down if his wife was indicted. Turned out that he reneged on that promise. Now he says he will step down only if his wife was convicted. If he breaks his word again by still staying in office even after Wu is convicted, that would show the limitations of a democratic system to Beijing.