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Home Editorials of Interest Jerome F. Keating's writings As the World Turns in Taiwan I: Junket Time

As the World Turns in Taiwan I: Junket Time

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) forum has begun in China. This is a party to party forum initiated in 2005 by the two leaders (KMT Lien Chan and CCP Hu Jintao); neither one of them has ever won a democratic election; that should tell you something about the nature of the forum. It is party to party, but in his own way of dodging the truth, Ma Ying-jeou wants to call it a cross-strait forum. He knows party to party talks cannot justify a basis for policy, but he does not want to give outsiders any real power in it. They will only be "special guests."

Though they will not have power, these guests are wanted so that they can seemingly give sanction to the party to party talks and then the KMT can claim everyone agreed on the matters discussed. That will make it easier for Ma to pretend the party to party talks should be transformed into his national policy. Whatever happened to the old KMT canard, "Gentlemen don't sit down with thieves?" Is this an acknowledgement that they all are thieves?

The forum also of course becomes a nice junket for some 270 people and even a few Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) people have joined in to be wined and dined in China. Lien Chan has to stake some claim to influencing the nation though he lost twice in his presidential bid. If you can't get them to vote for you, treat them to dinner. Some people can be bought cheap. I am curious, whose bucks are paying for all of this, China's or the KMT's stolen state assets.

Source:
Jerome F. Keating's writings



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Newsflash

President-elect William Lai (賴清德), the vice president, has been listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world this year.

Lai, who is to take office as president next month, is a coal miner’s son who became a Harvard-trained public health expert, and prizes problem solving and trust, the magazine said.

When he is sworn in as president on May 20, Lai would face much bigger challenges than safeguarding the health of 24 million Taiwanese, as he has to ensure “his government’s very survival, amid China’s ramped-up campaign to reclaim the nascent democracy,” Time said in the article, which was published on Wednesday.