Taiwan Italy the Planet: Comment on The Asia Fellows

I feel obliged to comment.

To accept an existence for Taiwan separate from China is to abjure Taiwan's right to be.

Politically and spiritually it cannot be distinct. The political and religious beliefs of most Chinese who live in Taiwan must reject this.

Both major political parties in Taiwan agree with the one Party in China on the at-one-ness of China. For religious Taiwanese, Taoist, Confucian or Buddhist separateness is apostasy.

Taiwan was created by those, the Kuomintang, who refused to accept any division of China. In the early days the only parliament in Taiwan WAS their's, one for China as a whole.The issue then, and now, is about how China inclusive of Taiwan should be governed not the independence of Taiwan from China.

Today Italy demonstrated to the world an important aspect of global reality. They effected a new democratic process reflecting a fundamental human reality. They incorporated overseas cultural Italians into the government of their country.

This recognises the significance to us, as human beings, of our cultural distinctiveness. Nations are created by them never us. Much conflict has its source in this: Iraq, Sierra Leone, Rwanda in fact Africa as a whole, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, etc. all came into being as they are in the interests of others not the peoples effected.

Modern Germany and Israel have always given their Diaspora the right of citizenship if they wished to exercise it. However Italian style cultural democracy is truly de novo.

Increasingly we live, where I now write, in cyberspace in which this is the reality not artificially created "national" boundaries.