Current mood:	enthralled
Current music:	Live - All Over You
Entry tags:	culture, politics

An evening of international political enlightenment
Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Jiunn-Rong Yeh, a cabinet minister for an economic powerhouse whose existence is formally acknowledged by only the pope and 25 econopolitically insignificant nations, about the history and prospects of his enigmatic country. The story of how this strange situation arose is a uniquely fascinating one. When KMT, the organization that had maintained a shaky grip on the reins of power in the Republic of China from its inception in 1912, was finally overthrown by the commies in 1949 its leaders retreated to the tiny island of Taiwan, taking their newly formed constitution with them and effectively relinquishing control of Mainland China to the commies. Since they had retained the constitution and all heads of state, however, they claimed to remain the official governing body of China as a whole and denounced the new People's Republic of China as a bunch of renegades.

While they may have been technically correct, the economic and military clout wielded by these "renegades" in possession of Mainland China held sway and during the 70s virtually all of the world's other countries came to accept that the People's Republic of China was here to stay. Together with this loss of legitimacy, the KMT also lost much of their ironclad authority as successive reforms by their aging leader ceded power to the people until the Republic of China on Taiwan eventually turned into an exemplar of democratic principles and free expression that stands in stark contrast to the systemic abuse of human rights exhibited by the People's Republic of China.

Nonetheless, despite being a free democratic society with a strong economy, Taiwan continues to live under the enormous shadow of the Communist government on Mainland China, which insists that Taiwan is still part of a unified China – even though it has a different currency and pays no taxes to the Communist party governing the People's Republic of China (PRC)! This predicament manifests itself in some peculiar ways. For instance, the PRC recently offered a pair of giant pandas to Taiwan. Normally transferring endangered animals between countries would require approval from CITES. However, since the PRC considers Taiwan to be part of a unified China, they refuse to let CITES get involved with what they insist is a purely domestic matter! Another issue is that one of Taiwan's major political parties (KMT) also happens to be a major commercial power in its own right, with several billion US dollars worth of assets; a unique feature amongst the world's political parties.