The Free China

Fire of Liberty

Here's a great piece by the Wall Street Journal Europe columnist/investigative reporter Claudia Rosett on Taiwan. If you want to point to a small island nation within Asia that has emerged out of an authoritarian past into a fully-fledging democracy that has also become one of the wealthiest countries in the world. I guess when you allow your people to live in a democracy in which they can pick from the many fruits of Liberty you generally get these results. Maybe their communist neighbors and relatives (It's hard to refer to them as a neighbor, what with it pointing up to 700 plus missiles towards Taiwan) to the north can get a grip on what it takes to make the transition towards a democracy. (Hint: Stop do things like: locking folks up who dissent against the gov't, dissuading people from practicing their religious faith, forced abortions, blocking INTERNET access to forbidden sites like CNN, BBC, FOX News, American Think Tanks, and blogs not to mention restricting the searches and usage of words like "democracy" or "freedom". ) Unfortunately, this proud and successful island nation of 23 million will continue to be overshadowed as long as China and its friends in the UN have their way. Take a look at its most recent disdain towards Taiwan:

This year, amid the U.N. festivities over its own 60th birthday and high-minded aims, the General Assembly was even busier than usual. So the U.N. folded Taiwan's request for equitable representation in with a new request sent over by Mr. Hsia, for the U.N. to uphold its own charter by actively promoting peace in the Taiwan Strait--which is lined on the communist side with missiles targeted on Taiwan. Red China, backed by Pakistan, opposed both items. Gambia and Chad argued for Taiwan. The U.N. allotted 24 minutes for the entire debate, and then briskly dismissed it as not worth including in the official agenda of the General Assembly.

Borrowing a page from George Orwell, the U.N. also celebrated its anniversary with a poster in the lobby of its famous but decrepit headquarters, on which it advertised a display of "Original Signatories of the U.N. charter." Except they weren't. The original signatory for China of the U.N. charter was the Republic of China. In the 2005 U.N. version, the signatory listed was "China, People's Republic of." Informed of this Turtle Bay twisting of history, Mr. Hsia wrote to U.N. Undersecretary-General Shashi Tharoor, noting, "It is hard to imagine how the U.N., perhaps the world's most important international organization and one which is widely counted on to preserve the truth, could allow itself to blatantly deviate from history and misinform the world about something so fundamental to its history."

The U.N. did not write back, says Mr. Hsia, nor did the U.N. correct the mistake. Instead, in the finest tradition of Orwell's memory hole--the poster simply vanished.

Thanks to Rosett, people in America, Europe and Asia knows what a little bit of democracy can bring about if it's allowed to flourish.