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His party doesn’t speak for the majority of Taiwanese. There were two opposition parties (that favored working with Beijing) whose votes totaled a majority 60% of votes to the DDPs plurality of 40%.

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Does it matter to Lenny that the people in Taiwan don't want to be controlled by the dictatorship in Beijing?

The republic of Taiwan has its own laws. The Taiwanese have their own elections, their own president, their own government, their own military, their own police, their own schools, their own hospitals, their own stock market - need I continue? Are they a country or not?

China isn't communist anymore other than in name, but it remains a dictatorship that few people in China like. Everyone knows the party is corrupt, rewarding its own, allowing them to build shoddy factories and buildings that easily fall in earthquakes, killing the people inside. They have had countless examples of explosions in fireworks factories, resulting in deaths, because safety laws aren't followed, because the Party takes bribes to ignore them. The corruption kills. Toxic waste in the factories is poured out on the floor, where former peasants walk and breathe in the fumes. The unhealth is immense. If elections were allowed in China the corrupt party would be voted away immediately.

But regardless of that, Taiwan is and remains a nation. Be honest enough to admit that. The Taiwanese don't want to be controlled by the dictator in Beijing. They deserve to be free from that control. And it is good that they are free from that control.

"But Washington! We can't approve of anything Washington supports!" That is the attitude of people as fanatic as the neocons, just in the opposite direction. People who will ignore what the Chinese government does, ignore that the Ethiopian government has killed and rahped tens of thousands of Tigrinye just recently - a new BRICS country must be praised and not criticized, and ignore that the dictator in Nicaragua held a sham election where the opposition leaders were arrested and banned from campaigning. Because - if Washington says one thing, then we must say another, right?

So, "Taiwan is not a country! Everyone agrees it belongs to China!" That's what we hear. The reason nations won't state the very obvious, that Taiwan is a country, is because they don't want to lose trade with the Chinese people, which the Chinese dictatorship would cut off in that case. But I hear Beijing apologists use this "argument" over and over again.

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