Washington, Feb. 29 (CNA) The only rational explanation for Beijing issuing the latest threat against Taiwan is that a split in the Communist Chinese leadership is rapidly widening, and this severe internal stress may lead to a military attack on Taiwan, said a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist on Tuesday.
"Our candidates for president should call on Clinton and Congress to respond with resolution to the new intimidation of Taiwan. The way to prevent war -- and the terrible decision that would face the next president -- is to make clear now that belligerent threats by Beijing's dominant faction trigger consequences that will weaken China," wrote William Safire in an article published by the Houston Chronicle.
He pointed out that one side -- the "half-good" side behind Prime Minister Zhu Rongji -- wants to take the capitalist road, loosen economic constraints, do business with the United States and join the World Trade Organization, while stifling political freedom at home.
The far worse side -- behind President Jiang Zemin and the corrupt military-industrial cartels -- fears free trade, and counters worker and student unrest by arresting dissidents and cracking down on the growing Falun Gong movement.
Clinton has been assuming that the half-good side behind Zhu is winning. "The tragedy is that the Jiang hard-liners are winning. To be charitable about the motive for Clinton's appeasement, it is intended to help the better side, but the practical result has been to enrich, embolden and empower those hard-core Communist despots whose families are tightly tied to the militarists," wrote Safire.
He said that's why Communist China sells arms to rogue states, why it sides stridently with Russia against the West on Kosovo and Iraq, and why it sent a mob to trash the US embassy in deliberately violent response to America's accidental bombing.
The militarists have recently seen what a dose of nationalist fervor can do to keep a repressive regime in power. They watched how Vladimir Putin used "breakaway Chechnya" as his scapegoat to take workers' minds off economic stress, said Safire, adding that "they have been making the same noises about `breakaway Taiwan' as Putin did before his popular rape of the Chechens."
The columnist concluded that "America's policy must not reward the Jiang adventurists by extending them WTO membership and by failing to be the arsenal of Taiwan's democracy. That would further enervate Jiang's internal opposition in the Forbidden City." (By Nelson Chung)
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