Rice botched her chance in Beijing

[dArKeR]

hina's "Anti-Secession" Law was one of the key issues for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's two-day visit to Beijing. During a meeting with Rice on Sunday, Chinese President Hu Jintao (???) demanded that the US not send a "wrong signal" to the "Taiwan separatist forces," while Rice reiterated Washington's opposition to any unilateral action that may change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

Superficially, the two countries appeared equally matched in the meeting, but in fact, China had the upper hand, as it had already passed a law legitimizing in its own mind its threat of war against Taiwan. That law has shifted the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. In requesting that Beijing make efforts to reduce cross-strait tension, Washington was merely trying to remedy a situation that existed. There is no guarantee that Beijing will take up this proposal, so clearly Hu came off better in the talks.

When the 10th National People's Congress passed the law on March 14, Premier Wen Jiabao (???) attempted to entice the people of Taiwan by expressing China's willingness to relax restrictions on agricultural imports from southern Taiwan, chartered passenger flights for holidays and opening chartered cargo flights. The government immediately rejected such insignificant concessions, while the Taiwanese people took Wen's mix-up between "Tainan" and "southern Taiwan" as a joke. His confusion made it abundantly clear that Taiwan was totally foreign to him.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2005/03/22/2003247342

[autorank]

1. At a time when we need intelligence and integrity, we have Rice and *.

China is very disturbing. Unfortunately, our foreign policy disturbs a great many people. So instead of going into China and pointing out that they're obviously smoking crack and should starting acting like the great nation they are becoming, we have the Rice girl and * moron. I'll never forget when China shot a missile over Taiwan to influence the elections there. What a bunch of clowns. They are dangerous but there is no one to stand up to them. Ah well. I can't see this ending well.

[Maple]

2. The US

doesn't allow secession or separation either.

Fought a war over it in fact.