Pacific island nations eye China's rise

UPI ^ | March 27, 2006 | KATHLEEN HWANG

[buglemanster]

Is that the former Japanese port city?

No.. it's Manchurian. Japan occupied it briefly like many other cities in Asia. But to say that Dalian is Japanese is like saying Paris is a German city.

[buglemanster]

Location of Dalian is the yellow dot.

[buglemanster]

They are doing it much more slowly than Gorby. Gorby reformed the politics before reforming the economics. The Chinese are reforming the economics before the politics. So far they have proven wiser than Gorby. Of course they have a long way to go.

Of course Taiwan is the future of China. Most Chinese know this. The Chinese still view the KMT as a Chinese party. There is high likelihood that the KMT might one day return to the mainland and challenge the Communists for power. That is the ideal conclusion of the Mainland-Taiwan conflict.

But you are making a mistake to believe that China today is like the ROC during the late 1940s. First off, the wealth of ROC was concentrated in one city: Shanghai. In today's PRC, the wealth is more spread out throughout the coastline (although Shanghai still leads) and also the "middle class" (salarymen) is 20x larger than during the ROC. One can't make a scapegoat out of only one region in today's PRC. Second, there were armed militias back then, but today no civilian is armed. Third, the PRC is getting smarter, rather than using armed soldiers to quell uprisings, it's using "riot police" with tear gas and rubber bullets. A repeat of Tiananmen is almost unimaginable. If they are indeed so stupid as to try that again, then they are basically asking to be removed from power.