Gregory Clark and Tibet

It didn't take Gregory Clark long to come up with a column in the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ on the recent troubles in Tibet チベット ("Tibet and Olympic Games"). He only makes one reference to Taiwan, but it's a classic:

"As for Tibetan independence, people forget that the strongest opponent was the Western-backed Nationalist Chinese government that ended up in Taiwan. Beijing simply inherited that Western-approved situation."

So it's all Taiwan's fault! Well, Greg, I'm no fan of the KMT 中国国民党, but it wasn't their forces that invaded Tibet in 1950, and drove the Dalai Lama ダライ・ラマ into exile in 1959. But there's no end to the excuses that Clark dreams up to explain away one of the world's worst abusers of human rights. In fact, he's been writing in this vein for so long, it's hard to work up a sense of outrage anymore. But it does make me wonder how people who can otherwise distinguish between what is right and wrong (as far as I know, Gregory Clark has never committed any felonies) can betray those most basic principles of being human when the lives of literally millions are needlessly suffering. Or is that also a part of being human?

And so we come to Taiwan, and the March 22 presidential election. I'm having a difficult time comprehending why otherwise decent people would consider voting for a party like the KMT, with it's long history of unrepentant corruption (and cozy ties with gangsters) and repression (40 years of martial law 戒厳令, the 228 Incident 二・二八事件, the White Terror 白色テロ etc.) This isn't like deciding to vote against the Republicans 共和党, where even though one might disagree with many of their conservative principles, it is still the party of Lincoln, after all. No, the KMT is odious, plain and simple, yet it controls the legislature, and stands a good chance of capturing the presidency. There are plenty of types like Gregory Clark here in Taiwan, with their warped views of both history and current events often being reflected on the pages of the China Post, a newspaper which frequently tries to portray Chiang Kai-shek (Shō Kaiseki) 蒋介石 as the man who (almost single-handedly!) defeated the Japanese in World War II (never mind the fact that the Japanese army was still entrenched in China when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima 広島 and Nagasaki 長崎, and the Red Army 赤軍 attacked Manchuria 満州国); protected Taiwan from communism (no, it was the U.S. Seventh Fleet 第7艦隊 that did that); and started Taiwan on the path to democracy (a process which was actually begun by his son following Chiang's death). I guess it all comes down to what benefits the individual more than anything else, and if the KMT is judged to be party that can better bring home the bacon, then a little moral obfuscation will help to swallow the bitter pill that comes with all that pork.

Perhaps the day will come when the KMT will attempt to atone for its sins of the past, either by reforming itself into a new party, like the former communists in Hungary ハンガリー, or agreeing to the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to look into past misdeeds, as was done in South Africa 南アフリカ共和国. And someday, too, pigs may take to the skies, and there will be snowball fights in Hell.