China Welcomes Loser Lien Chan, Their Kind of Man

Saturday May 03, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Lien Chan is in China for his fourth visit and one cannot help but wonder why Hu Jintao delights in discussing cross-strait relations with a known loser in Taiwan. Lien has never really won an important election in Taiwan. Perhaps that is his appeal to someone like Hu, who is naturally not keen on democracy and elections anyway. Other questions naturally follow. Does the loser Lien want to prove that he is a player though he never had a good reputation as such in the past? Perhaps he is looking for a place where his millions acquired as Chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will go a lot farther when he thinks of retirement?

Current KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung is expected to visit shortly to maintain party-to-party contacts. So why the visit of Lien? True, Lien gave a sculpture by a Taiwanese artist to Hu but really? Is Hu playing one party faction against the other to try to influence Ma Ying-jeou? That kind of game can backfire. All this happening before Ma Ying-jeou has even taken office. It makes you wonder what the next four years will be like.