Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Western academics being told they deserve condemnation for interfering in a country’s internal affairs after they criticize what they believe might be an abuse of power by the government is something that is usually associated with China. When US government officials or professors accuse China of abusing human rights by arresting dissenters or squelching opposition with supposedly “legal” means, Chinese authorities either refer to them as ignorant foreigners who don’t understand the specific requirements of running the Middle Kingdom, or they accuse them of seeking to denigrate China for political purposes.

With less than a year to go before elections, the Ma government is claiming that there are some 36,000 missing documents that are unaccounted for between the Chen turnover of administration in 2008 and the present time 2011. They claim this is not political but their explanations are lame. Picture the following.

Let us say you work for the government or even for a major corporation and you leave your office or position in 2008; now some three years later you are facing accusations, not that you have, but that you may have not adequately accounted for all documents, classified information etc. from 3 years ago. When would the natural time have been to bring this up, three years ago when matters would be fresh in the mind of both you and your staff or three years later?