Political Skullduggery

After a recent thaw in China/Taiwan relations, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has decided now is the time to toy with the sensitive issue of pressing for full legal independence from the Communist China.

The Reds don't have much of a sense of humor about the Straits issue.

Defying warnings from China and the United States, Taiwan eliminated its National Unification Council on Monday and said that only the Taiwanese people can decide whether they want to rejoin the mainland...

China's government and Communist Party Taiwan affairs offices jointly condemned Chen's move as an incitement to tension. "Chen Shui-bian persists in pushing the radical route of Taiwanese independence and provoking confrontation and conflict within Taiwanese society and across the Taiwan Strait," they said in a statement Tuesday. "This will only bring disaster to Taiwanese society."

Even the Bush administration can see a potential foreign policy crisis here (not of it's own making this time).

The White House 10 days ago dispatched Dennis Wilder, an Asia specialist on the National Security Council staff, and Clifford Hart, who handles Taiwan affairs at the State Department, to Taipei for an unannounced meeting with Chen to press the U.S. case.

Chen rejected the appeals, press reports said. He followed up last week by telling a visiting U.S. congressman, Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), that the council and guidelines were "absurd products of an absurd era."

Bush's family is well-known to be close to, and sensitive to the wishes of, Red China. President Bush's father, the first President Bush, was U.S. ambassador to China in the 1970's.

It should be no time before we hear W extolling the need for the freedom hatin' Taiwanese to get back in the box.