Taiwan/China Leaders Meeting; The Inevitable, not the Enviable

The leaders of China and Taiwan will meet
 Saturday on the neutral ground of Singapore,
 breaking 70 years of hostility. The last such 
meeting came in 1945, when Chiang Kai-shek
 got together with Mao Zedong. That was four
 years before Mao’s "takeover" (sic. NYT ) sent
 Chiang and his Nationalists "fleeing" to Taiwan,
 then called Formosa.

There are many reasons why leaders from different lands get together to chat; the best reason is to insure peace and prosperity for the people who live under their rule. The worst reason is to make their rule tighter. 

The meeting today between Ma Ying-Jyou and Xi Jun-Ping has little to do with insuring peace or increasing prosperity. Just the fact that the President of Taiwan can pick up and meet a foreign leader without approval of the people or prior consent from the legislature reveals clearly how the KMT, despite the rhetoric about "democracy" after  the 38 year-long martial law era ended, has little democracy at all.

The people of Taiwan are observers in this farcical meeting of leaders as they suffer under the reality of neo-liberal austerity making the full-time jobs with living wages impossible. As China and the U.S. divvy up what they can get from Taiwan, they subject this small island to more pollution, overuse and destruction of its scenic spots. 

People who love Taiwan, those who would claim to be supporters of independence, are cowards; they dare not fight for what they want. The premature birth, and death, of the "Sunflower Movement," co-opted by the DPP in this phony two-party system, was for their own political gains; not one youthful demonstrator got an increase in salary or a job for their troubles. Now the KMT has an opportunity for political gains in this meeting of their leader, Ma, with Xi Jun-Ping. 

Who are the real enemies of Taiwan, the ones that have made them, again, second-class citizens in their own homeland? The Taiwanese people can only blame themselves.

Let the farce continue; it is inevitable, but it is not enviable. As the workers of China continue to pass their Taiwanese neighbors' level of income and living standard, perhaps it is better that a People's Republic usurp this last of the twentieth century ruling fascist powers and impose their government on Taiwan; remove the last insult of Western interference in China's progressive affairs. However, there is no improvement in the standard of living for working people on the horizon across the Taiwan Strait. 

The Taiwanese people have to continue educating themselves, and be themselves, refusing to cave in to cultural erosion and foreign domination. This meeting today between two foreign leaders claiming Taiwan as their own, is irrelevant.