Chinese espionage targeting Taiwan just got a little easier:
Taiwan has relaxed rules for Chinese media, long regarded as spy organizations for the Communist government, as relations warm between the two long-time political rivals, officials said on Wednesday.
Effective immediately, Chinese media, which include state-run giants such as Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television, can increase staff from two to five people apiece and travel to any part of Taiwan or its outlying islands, officials said.
Expect a multi-part series on the bridges, tunnels, and other chokepoints of Taiwan. Plus a nice picnic show in the wildflower fields just outside the Patriot missile batteries southwest of Taipei.
This article is a little more hopeful. Although it starts with a gross misreading of the cross-strait tensions:
AFTER only 18 months as President of Taiwan, Harvard-educated lawyer Ma Ying-jeou has become a hero figure across Asia, in the wider Chinese world and in Washington and Tokyo, for defusing tensions that for decades threatened war with China across the Taiwan strait.
Good grief. China still wants to own Taiwan. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that Ma pretends not to notice that China's smiles barely conceal growing military power directed at Taiwan. Pretending your enemy is not your enemy is not the same as defusing tensions. If it was, sticking its head in the sand would be a fine protective measure for Ostriches.
What is hopeful is this part of the article:
"Our factories are still going to China, and Ma lets them go. He gives our jobs to mainland Chinese. I lost my job too, as a tour guide." Taiwan recently started letting Chinese visit as tourists. They are now arriving at the rate of almost 400,000 a year. At first, they were expected to spend big in Taipei's famous night markets, but now the pattern is set: they stay in their hotel rooms at night, sitting agog in front of TV screens, dazzled by the spectrum of energetically and freely expressed views, and especially by the public criticism of the government.
It is hopeful that Taiwanese aren't reliant on increased Chinese tourist spending. That isn't panning out. So the mainland isn't pulling Taiwan into its orbit economically quite as much as Peking surely hoped.
And what is really hopeful is that the Chinese tourists (well, just the actual tourists and not the short-haired softball teams that "tour" Taiwan) sit agog in front of their TV screens at night, taking in the freedom to criticize their own government. I have to believe that taking that knowledge back to the mainland won't be good for the communist party overlords in the long run.
When the PLA learns more about Taiwan, that's bad for Taiwan. When Chinese civilians learn about Taiwan, that's bad for China.
