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For Beijing, Taiwan is just another Tiananmen


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By Lev Navrozov
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
Lev Navrozov

August 15, 2005

On July 10, I received a one-page-long e-mail from Wen-Kai Tang, who says that he is a Chinese living in New York and who begins his e-mail as follows:

    I read your articles about Mainland China with interest. Everyone can hold his or her opinion and while I disagree with you, I am certain you bear no ill will toward the Chinese people or nation.

Ill will? I was the bitterest critic of the Soviet dictatorship. But I bore no ill will toward the Russian people (including myself). On the contrary, I regarded the Russian poetry of the first third of the twentieth century as unique and superior to the poetry of any Western country of that time. Indeed, one of the crimes of the Soviet dictatorship was the suffocation, through the lack of freedom of the press, of the great Russian poetry — and of Russian culture in general. Opposition to a dictatorship implies good will toward the people or nation under the dictatorship. Inversely, by justifying the Chinese dictatorship, Wen-Kai Tang implies that the Chinese people are to blame for whatever has been happening to China since 1949.

Wen-Kai Tang notes that since he is a Chinese, that “fact will shape” his “opinions on the matters” I “speak of.”

So he believes that the truth is national or nationalist. For example, I and many other non-Germans and Germans believe that Germany created music superior to whatever other Western countries or Russia produced, while the Nazi period was the worst time in the history of Germany. But here may come a German and tell as “the German truth” that Beethoven was a worthless traitor because he used French marches in his music, while the Nazi period is the greatest time in the history of Germany.

Today, after Nazism lost its bid for world domination, it is a rare German who will say the above, and he will be scorned as a derelict. But in 1939 he would have been feared and hated as a living representative of an awesome living dictatorship seeking world domination.

As a Chinese, telling “the Chinese truth” about China, Wen-Kai Tang says:

    I believe the current regime in Mainland China seeks not to dominate the world but only to restore territories that had been part of old core China (like my home province of Taiwan) and reassert influence that had been part of the Chinese sphere of influence.

So, it is my opinion against Wen-Kai Tang's. His only argument is that his opinion comes from a Chinese. On the other hand, I have a non-Chinese theory, suggesting that the Chinese dictatorship is after world domination.

The fact is that any large modern dictatorship is extremely vulnerable from within. Why did the Soviet dictatorship collapse in 1991? In a public poll in Russia after Yeltsin had become its president following the collapse of the dictatorship in 1991, four times more respondents said they considered Stalin “the greatest Russian political leader” than those who said they regarded Yeltsyn as such. Hence the number of those Russians who in 1991 were for democracy and against dictatorship was minimal. Yet Yeltsin's democracy replaced Gorbachev's dictatorship, despite the Soviet security police, armed forces, and propaganda since 1918 and up to 1990!

A tall thin building may collapse without any force to topple it. Dictatorship is such a tall thin structure. In contrast to democracy — it has a small base. Democracy is vulnerable to an outside attack: France collapsed within days under a Nazi attack, while it was intact when the Communists, calling for a “violent overthrow of the existing government” received one quarter of the votes. On the other hand, the Soviet dictatorship survived a Nazi attack but collapsed in 1991 without any outside attack and from a minimal inner opposition.

Dictatorships are more vulnerable than were empires because the absolute power in empires was transmitted hereditarily, while in a dictatorship no one has a less valid right to the absolute power than anyone else. Stalin became the dictator and murdered Trotsky, while Trotsky might have become the dictator and murdered Stalin.

Industrial dumping that poisons streams and farmland? In a democracy, there are many ways to stop it. For example, an article in an independent press or a lawsuit against the industrial dumping. In China, the remedy is a “protest demonstration,” which can be called a “violent protest,” since the authorities try to disperse it, and the protesters resist. In 2004, there were 58,000 “violent protests”! On July 28, 2005, the editorial of People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, condmned and threatened the protesters as dangerous to the “stability.”

Why were those peaceful unarmed Chinese on the Tiananmen Square crushed in 1989 by mechanized armor — an unprecedented excess of power, violence, and cruelty in the post-Nazi times? Because (I am told) the dictator happened to be so cruel. But I do not believe that dictators are cruel because of their innate evil nature. In 1989, the dictator of China staged that mechanized armor attack on unarmed peaceful Chinese because he feared (and correctly so) the collapse of his dictatorship (as in Russia two years later) and wanted to teach the Chinese a lesson.

Taiwan — and the West! — are just huge Tiananmen Squares. Their independent existence is subversive to the dictatorship of China (those on the Tiananmen Square had a replica of the Statue of Liberty). A pretext has to be invented to enable the dictator of China to crush Taiwan (if the dictator decides that the United States will not defend it) just as the dictator crushed the Tiananmen Square.

For example, it can be asserted that all Chinese must live in one country. Obviously, the pretext is more absurd than Hitler's claim that all Germans should live in his Germany. The symbol of post-1949 China is a five-prong star, and Marx, Lenin, and Mao are its teachers. They said that all nations of all five continents (hence the five prongs of the star) should live in a single Communist society. This global five-prong unification contradicts Wen-Kai Tang's claim that the Chinese dictator wants to crush Taiwan because living there are Chinese presumably bemoaning their separation from “Mainland China.”

In its present state, Taiwan originated after the war between the the Kuomintang, supported by the United States, and Mao's Communist Party supported by Stalin (though the Chinese and Soviet Communists later predictably quarreled). Finally, it was decided that Mao would control Mainland China, and the Kuomintang would have Taiwan. If the goal is the unity of China, why should the Communist dictators of China rule Taiwan, and not the government of Taiwan rule Mainland China, as the Kuomintang once did?

Wen-Kai Tang believes that all or most Taiwanese share his opinion about the dictators of Mainland China and will meet the Mainland Communist takeover of Taiwan with tears of joy and gratitude. Actually, many or most Taiwanese would consider him either a vicious traitor or an amazingly ignorant, stupid yet sentimental nincompoop.

The Mainland China-Taiwan settlement was similar to the North Korea-South Korea settlement.

Reunification? Excellent! But are the rulers of North Korea to rule the “reunified” Korea? Of course!

This is what they tried to do in 1950 — it was a massive all-out military aggression, and the result was the Korean War, which lasted for three years. The rulers of North Korea were finally repulsed, despite the Chinese dictators' aid. But the rulers of North Vietnam fought with Soviet and Chinese aid for about ten years. They did conquer South Vietnam and turn it into their territory, as totalitarian as their own North Vietnam.

The difference is that North Korea and Vietnam are small countries, and their aggressions cannot be global, while Mainland China is a giant, able to develop post-nuclear superweapons, circumventing Mutual Assured Destruction.

Just as was the Tiananmen Square, Taiwan is only a stage in the Chinese dictators' domestic suppression and their all-out quest for world domination.

Since Wen-Kai Tang lives in New York and not in Mainland China, he can declare without any fear of persecution:

    As for the domestic political makeup of Mainland China, surely myself and many other Chinese are for a more open pluralistic regime than the current one.
But this is what the Tiananmen movement was all about. Wen-Kai Tang does not even hint at the fact that it was crushed (literally), and no regret has ever been expressed by the Chinese powers that be.

Wen-Kai Tang and “many other Chinese are for a more open and pluralistic regime than the current one,” and at the same time he is for the seizure of Taiwan by the dictators' military force against the will of many Taiwanese, who may be massacred in the process of the dictators'seizure of the country just as were the Chinese on Tiananmen Square in the process of the dictators' seizure of the Square. Unless Taiwan surrenders.

Wen-Kay Tang's “more open pluralistic regime” is to be based on the subjugation by the Chinese dictators' military force of Taiwan today — and of the West tomorrow.

Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.

August 15, 2005

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