Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

For years, foreign policy optimists have predicted that China’s rise to superpower status would be peaceful and responsible, but recent Chinese actions make this vision look increasingly naive. The administration of US President Barack Obama must decide whether to respond to Beijing’s hostility or allow its aggressiveness to go unchecked.

China continues to modernize and expand its nuclear-capable delivery systems, even as Obama urges Senate ratification of a treaty with Russia that would further reduce US nuclear weapons and long-range conventional delivery systems. Beijing operates under no restraints whatsoever in enhancing its nuclear and ballistic missile options, while also developing new “carrier killer” cruise missiles.

The answer given by a police officer for blocking a protest could not have been more obscure, if not worrying. Asked on what grounds Tibetan protesters applying for a permit to demonstrate on Sunday against a controversial Tibetan Buddhist art exhibition at the National Palace Museum would have been turned down, the officer’s response was: “Based on which law? Well, maybe I should not answer that question.”

Well, maybe he should, because there is no law in this land that can bar a group from holding a protest at the museum, political or otherwise. Such a law exists less than 200km across the Taiwan Strait, however, and there are signs that the laws over there are little by little becoming a rule of thumb here.