Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) looked like a snake oil salesman when he held up a half-empty bottle of fake “Taiping Island water” at a news conference, while simultaneously attempting to smear the name of National Taiwan University professor Chiang Huang-chih (姜皇池), saying “not one word is true” of an article written by Chiang last year.
Ma continued to sound like a “professional student” (informer for the government): As an angry young man, he chimed in with China in his defense of the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), and as an angry old man, he is working hard to show that Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) is really an island and not a “rock.”