Does the US get China's game? - Democratic Underground

dArKeR

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Sat May-07-05 10:58 AM
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Does the US get China's game?

Edited on Sat May-07-05 11:07 AM by dArKeR

The Bush administration has been sending contradictory messages to China in the last two years, damaging US strategic interests in East Asia. So Thursday's phone call between US President George W. Bush and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao (???) comes as a relief.

In the call the US president stressed that Taiwan opposition leaders were fine but if any progress was to be made on achieving greater stability in the Taiwan Strait it could only be done by Beijing dealing directly with, as Scott McClellan put it, "the duly elected leaders in Taiwan, and that means President Chen and his Cabinet."

Such sound advice comes as a breath of fresh air after the contradictory mess that has been US policy. We have commented before on how the US has concentrated on containing Chen and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government and boosting the pan-blues -- to the extent of the State Department's last-minute intervention in last December's legislative election campaign against the DPP -- even though the pan-blues, as Greater China nationalists, have strategic interests exactly the opposite of the US. The passage of Beijing's "Anti-Secession" Law seems to have finally injected a little common sense into policy in Washington.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2005/05/07/2003253571

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