From: Comment
Subject: Re: weapon sales to Taiwan
Keywords: weapons, Taiwan
Organization: Queen's University, Kingston
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 20:24:22 GMT

In article <mvdvalk.726314577@mekong>, mvdvalk@cs.utwente.nl (Martijn van der Valk) writes:
|> Dear netters,
|> 
|> Many Taiwanese Chinese seem to be in favour of a strong Taiwan that can defend
|> itself against military intervention and they seem to agree on their government
|> buying Western weapon systems.
|> 
|> I was wondering about the following. The currently most likely candidate to
|> attack Taiwan is mainland China. Do the people of Taiwan realise that in that
|> case, Western weapons would (again) be killing Chinese?
|> 
It is very likely that the bloody civil war  in 1940s between
the Nationalist army and the Communist army would  occur again. The war in 1940s
claimed millions of Chinese lives. Who should be responsible for this ugly 
crime? My amswer is: both communist and nationalist  leaders, as well as their
supporters---Soviet communists and some western politicians and arms dealers. 
Thanks to Soviet weapons, the Chinese communists grew from a small armed gang
to a million-strong army. Thanks to strong support of  some western 
politicians and arms dealers, the Nationalist leaders thought they were able 
to destroy the communists in a few weeks, like what they almost did in 1930s.
Unfortunately, the Nationalists failed. The common people might not care much
who would be their leader, if the leader could feed them. However, It is the 
common people who sufferred most in the dirty power strugle: millions of 
Chinese lives were lost; the economy was totally destroyed; childrens lost
their parents; wives lost their husbands.


|> According to the Dutch/French sinologist Kristoffer Schipper, the economic
|> success of mainland China will lead to a decline of the economic power of
|> Japan. He foresees another Sino-Japanese war in the coming 50 years.
|> 
|> Imagine the following scenario: the mainland starts a (small) military
|> intervention against Taiwan because the TI movement has become too powerful
|> or whatever reason they come up with: civil war in the Pacific, Chinese
|> butchering Chinese for the better of the Chinese people, no doubt.
|> 
|> Japan, loyal to the Taiwanese as ever, tells the US that they will take care of
|> the poor island and start to ``help'' the Taiwanese forces.
|> 
|> Result: Japan and China are again at war...
|> 
It appears difficult to predict the relation between Japan and China. However,
during a possible war between the Nationalist and Communist armies, if the U.S.A.
does not send sodiers to help the Nationalist side, Japan may not be involved in 
this war, at least in the near future. 

Anyway, a bloody civil war between Chinese and Chinese is for sure very stupid and
ugly. All the leaders and their supporters involved in this war should be blamed.
The Chinese people want peace. It appears to me that peaceful political and 
economic reforms in the mainland China and peaceful cooperation and unification
of all Chinese are the best solution to this potentially horrible problem


-- 
=============================================================================
John Liu 
Department of Electrical Engineering
Queen's University                       Phone:  (613)545-6693
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6        Email:  liu@sound.ee.queensu.ca