There will thus come a day when someone in China will ask why Beijing was willing to make a sacrifice of its own embassy personnel to provide diplomatic cover to a remote, inconsequential and brutal government. And on that day we will see exactly how deep the support for this regime runs in the streets of the great nation of China. And yet none of these issues is what must keep Beijing's leaders awake at night. What must keep them awake at night is the fact that, by his very emphasis on the so-called recovery of Taiwan, President Jiang is essentially telling his people that he has nothing more to offer them than reabsorbing a sweaty little Manchu colony off the Fujien coast. The magic of economic growth in China has apparently run its course.
Communism is dead.
So it all comes down to Taiwan. Son, let me offer a thoroughly American perspective on Taiwan. Taiwan and China may be one country for diplomatic purposes, but Taiwan is not Chinese. It was a Manchurian outpost in the 1800s. Then Japan conquered and industrialized it.