[b]“Which US President-elect do you feel has a stronger agenda for Taiwan?”
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“Which US President-elect…” – I love it! I still bristle whenever I hear about Shrub’s latest pretend cabinet member – the nerve, the arrogance!
But as to your question about which of these clowns would do Taiwan better, I would say Shrub has the mindset more attractive to Taiwan. He’d park a carrier group in the Taiwan Strait yesterday, if only to show China that they better ‘read his lips’.
Then again, with a 50-50 divide down the House and Senate, Shrub will probably be reduced to more bluster than any meaningful kind of action. Which would merely roil the, at times, heated waters separating my neighborhood from the Red Peril.
On the other hand, I would expect Prince Albert, on the other hand, to maintain Bill’s present “Strategic Ambiguity”. But I have no confidence in that. He would seek to engage (kowtow?, boot-lick??) Beijing – altho I still can’t see much effectiveness in this course of action. Any economic progress that happens in China is due to economic/monetary forces than not.
At the end of the day, the Big Heads at Da Lu are still not going to want to kill the Goose that Lays the Golden Yams. I just hope that if Shrub does indeed occupy the Oval Office (well, if only for the next four years), he watches his mouth and recognizes the limits of his office. After all, his campaign is 50% responsible for creating these limitations!
I know lots of people here who believe that Bush II will be better for Taiwan than Gore. But there’s a big difference between what politicians say and what they do. I can’t understand why anyone in Taiwan (or anywhere else, for that matter) is still surprised by this.
Take Reagan, for instance. He campaigned that he would reverse Washington’s recognition of Beijing. And what happened? Not only was there no reversal, but his administration soon signed the US-PRC Joint Communique, which many would say only made things worse for Taiwan. (Whether or not Taiwan back in the bad-old-days of martial law deserved better is a different matter.)
Then came Bush I, who had been posted in Beijing. (Just curious: Does anyone know if he can speak any Chinese? He already has problems with English.) When 6-4 (Tiananmen Square) came, he talked tough in public. But soon the press found out that he’d sent a secret emissary to Beijing to tell them not to worry, that everything was still business as usual.
Candidate Clinton blasted this “coddling” (or some other such term), and said he’d never do such a thing as president. Hmm. But at least he sent the aircraft carriers through the strait back in '96.
And now there’s Bush II. People expect him to be different? How sad.
Taiwan shouldn’t place its hopes in any US candidate/party/president.
I use Netscape and Pegasus every day. I would never use Outlook Express because of its vulnerability all those nasty viruses. I did use it once and found it inconvenient to have an e-mail client separate from my browser.
Pegasus is great because it allows you to selectively down load e-mail headers and then delete the spam from the server. I sometimes get 5 or 10 or even more copies of the same spam from one user, so Pegasus comes in very handy.
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