Madame Chiang Kai-Shek dies at 105 in New York

[MarkF]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14571-2003Oct24.html


Mark

[MarkF]

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I14537-2003Oct24

[Senjojutsu]

It has been probably two decades since I last heard her name - who knew she was still alive?

Upon reflection you have to run through a few "what if" permutations if the Kuomintang Nationalists in the 1940s had beaten back the Communists or at least maintained some mainland provinces for a divided China. How many millions who died under Mao would have lived?

Would the Korean War have happened?

Would the Vietnam War have happened?

Or would a "split mainland China" eventually have lead from a Cold War to a Third World War?

Is it promising for future peace in the 21st Century that we have a commie nation of over one billion people stealing our leading edge technology while US corporate greed sends thousands of American jobs to them annually?

[Joseph Svinth]

The directions that the KMT government took on Taiwan are not necessarily the directions the KMT government would have taken had it remained in power on the Mainland. For one thing, Taiwan is a LOT smaller, and for another, most everybody there was in a sense a volunteer. After all, most of them voted with their feet to be there.

My guess is that if the KMT had retained power, the the Chinese government would have been analogous to the Philippines under Marcos. In other words, notoriously corrupt. (It already was, so why change?)

Meanwhile, the Korean War started with the Soviet-backed NKPA crossing the wire into ROK. The Chinese didn't get seriously involved until X Corps neared the Yalu River, six months later. The Third World War would have been a strong possibility in the event of a direct US-Soviet confrontation during the winter of 1950-51.

[Geoff]

Senjojutsu wrote: "Is it promising for future peace in the 21st Century that we have a commie nation of over one billion people stealing our leading edge technology while US corporate greed sends thousands of American jobs to them annually?"

China isn't really communist in anything but name and hasn't been since the Deng-era. However, I agree that a strong China is potentially the most destabilizing influence for peace in the Pacific. One only has to look at the recent (past 10-12 years)military build-up especially in naval power to realize this. At the same time the GOP willingness to cave to China on market issues in order to help fat-cat donors to sell a few thousand toasters to crooked Chinese buerocrats is also a mjor impediment to normal, peaceful and stable relations. IMHO, what we need is a strong deterrent force supported by market diversification in Southeast Asia. If Japan would shoulder their share of the burden of their own safety that would be a first step. This could be followed by a closer alignment of ASEAN nations with US. Essentially this would freeze out China, North Korea and Burma. This little dissertation isn't my orgianl thinking, BTW. Check out various reports from the Rand Corp and liberal think-tanks, too.

Geoff Wingard

[Margaret Lo]

Originally posted by Joseph Svinth

My guess is that if the KMT had retained power, the the Chinese government would have been analogous to the Philippines under Marcos. In other words, notoriously corrupt. (It already was, so why change?)


I couldn't agree with you more Joe. It seems there was no avoiding the disasters suffered by China in the 20th century. Now China is on its way back and the other Asian nations are beginning to take notice. In Malaysia, Chinese language education is back in force, where it had fallen out of favor for much of the last century in favor of English. Governments throughout the area probably are waking up to the necessity of a long long long term strategy for relations with China.

I wonder if Korea and Japan are also tooling up Chinese language classes in elemetary schools?

M