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The Forum > Article Comments > The scourge of chequebook diplomacy > Comments

The scourge of chequebook diplomacy : Comments

By Greg Barns, published 8/5/2006

Australia would like to see both Taiwan and China cease meddling in the politics of the Solomon Islands.

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Communist Chinese and Nationalist Chinese/Taiwanese meddling in the domestic politics of the independent states of the Pacific gives the lie to their publicly proclaimed policy of 'non-interference' in the internal affairs of other sovereign countries. Both Chinese governments are quite arrant and unabashed hypocrites.

With chequebook in hand, the Communist and Nationalist Chinese/Taiwanese have successfully corrupted and attempted to subvert the government of the Solomon Islands and other Pacific states for both Chinese states' own self-interested and malign purposes. Both Chinas ought to mind their own business and leave the Pacific states to determine their own future.

In the end, it will be the ethnic Chinese communities of the Pacific that will be forced to pay the price for both Chinese states' manipulation and meddling in the internal politics of the sovereign Pacific states. Peking and Taipei would do well to remember that.
Posted by ripsnorter44, Monday, 8 May 2006 1:21:38 PM
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"Nationalist Chinese/Taiwanese" is a curious formulations. Not one I've seen before. Anyhow, the Nationalists were voted out of power in Taiwan in 2000.

This piece doesn't really tell us anything, unfortunately, but at least aportions blame between both Taipei and Beijing.
Posted by mhar, Monday, 8 May 2006 5:45:55 PM
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let them decide for themselves there proably going to have a war soon anyway
Posted by jkid, Monday, 8 May 2006 8:08:38 PM
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Of course "Australia" would.. so we can do the same chequebook diplomacy for OUR OWN interests.

Its ok for us to be part of the Commonwealth which forced the Chinese at the point of a gun to consume hundreds of tons of opium so the Sasoon family and the British crown could have more money to swim in, but its not ok for the Chinese to use a few bucks to get some influence in our backyard ? haha !

Cheep..cheep...thats the sound of the 'chickens of history' coming home to roost.

Sure... lets struggle to keep them out, but NOT delude ourselves into thinking we occupy some superior moral ground in doing so.
Posted by BOAZ_David, Monday, 8 May 2006 8:40:10 PM
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Gosh I agree with David. There is no moral high ground left for a country that stole $300 million from the Iraqi people as they starved to death and gave it to the same butcher who had been tormenting them for over 30 years.

The self-righteous rantings of Downer strike me as quite ludicrous - the man can't even bother to read cables telling him things are crook.

Not only that but surely cheque book diplomacy is better any day than bombs and bullets diplomacy as we have engaged in In Iraq and Afghanistan.
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Tuesday, 9 May 2006 2:48:27 AM
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One man's development aid is another man's chequebook diplomacy. One man's mini Marshall plan is another's infernal meddling.

Why do we have this insatiable desire to interfere in other peoples' affairs? By all means, follow our charitable instincts where it is appropriate to do so, but for heaven's sake let's not pretend that our money is somehow holier than anyone else's. Or that there isn't some ulterior motive to any funding we, or anyone else, cares to commit.

Providing financial support together with a quid pro quo has been standard international behaviour for millennia. The Romans used it to great effect in both Britannia and Gaul, for example. To somehow insist that there is a difference between our clean, free-of-strings-attached dollars and those tainted and corrupt dollars from another nation is the arrogant and insensitive standpoint for which we are rapidly becoming famous in the region.
Posted by Pericles, Tuesday, 9 May 2006 10:25:41 AM
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It wasn’t the case of foreign meddling (& the like ) creating anti-Chinese sentiment. It was (pre-existing) anti-Chinese sentiment which made it easy for people to accept meddling charges & hold the Chinese community collectively responsible.Both the govt. & opposition in the Solomon’s played anti-Chinese sentiment –when it suited them ( a case of heads you win, tails I loose, for the Chinese).

Chinese minorities & to a lesser extent the Indian minorities throughout the region tend to be quite successful in commerce.As a result they are more affluent than, & envied by, the less commercially adept, indigene races. This envy often leads to violence attacks on them.

A stark example is Indonesia:The Indonesian Chinese minority is relatively prosperous, but is made to pay for it by routinely being subjected to mob violence which typically spans the whole gamut of rapes, murders, pillage & arson. It has occurred in 1965-66, 1980, 1991, 1996, 1998, & 2001, and each time a different spark ignites the violence

Malaysia is another, there have been outbreaks of violence against the Chinese minority in Malaysia
in 1964, 1996 & 2000 .

In Tonga, Chinese merchants were banned from one nobles district in 2000 & later in the year after a series of hate crimes against Chinese, 600 Chinese shopkeepers were deported.

There has also violence against Indian interests in Malaysia & Fiji at various times.

Anti-Chinese antipathy is also exhibited in discriminatory legislation. Indonesia & Malaysia have a raft of laws which under various guises restricts the rights and opportunities of their Chinese minorities.

Foreign meddling may have provided the spark this time in the Solomon’s ,but there are many other potential sparks around and history shows that malcontents don’t need a valid reason, even a rumour will be enough morph their envy into mob violence.
Posted by Horus, Wednesday, 10 May 2006 8:05:22 PM
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Like normal Boaz is right who cares about the solomon islands i dont i dont live there thats why whta i do care about is how it effects me.
Posted by jkid, Monday, 22 May 2006 7:01:51 PM
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mhar:

The official and full name of Taiwan is the Republic of China on Taiwan and Nationalist China is still an informal generic appellation for the Republic of China on Taiwan. Therefore, Nationalist Chinese is still a generic appellation for the people and government of the Republic of China on Taiwan regardless of which political party is government at the time. However to make clear the synonymous relation between the Republic of China and Taiwan, the description of the Taiwanese and their government may be rendered, using a solidus, as Nationalist Chinese/Taiwanese (as I have done above) or, using brackets, Nationalist Chinese (Taiwanese), or vice versa. This is curious only to you.
Posted by ripsnorter848, Thursday, 2 November 2006 10:08:39 PM
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