Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Senior US officials were allegedly told during a private meeting with Singaporean Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) that Beijing aims to bring Taiwan into its fold by forging greater economic links and that it did not matter if the process took one or even three decades.

Held in Singapore’s Presidential Palace in May last year, the meeting was attended by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and former US charge d’affaires Daniel Shields, according to reports of the confidential talks revealed as part of the recent cache of classified US Department of State cables released by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.

Anyone who deals with Chinese will sooner or later hear them mournfully bemoan their "Century of Humiliation" and the "Unequal Treaties of the Opium War." These are historical events long past; they date back more than a century ago. Yet you never hear Chinese complain about more current things that were more destructive and outweigh those events. Take for example the shame of how some 30 million Chinese died under Mao's failed programs or the humiliation of how the harmony of their society was ripped apart by the Cultural Revolution. You also don't hear serious concern over the SARS cover-up that endangered the world or any shame over things like the recent 100,000 plus Chinese that caught AIDS because government programs allowed multiple uses of needles. Why?