On the issue of Taiwan

Flashback to November :

So there I was snoozing peacefully when in bounced in to the room my other half. She wants me to be part of this pro-Taiwan lobby group that she's setting up. Me, someone who's political inclination is somewhat flatter than silicon wafer used for fabricating transistors. The last time I voted.. which I can't even remember when as I've never voted in any election of any country that I belong to, lived in, a citizen of etc. You're about me. Ultimate non-voter.

What the heck. I thought to myself, life is full of interesting bits and politics, especially the issue of Taiwan and its odd-ish situation might be fun to dabble in. So I agreed.

Fast Forward to December:

The lobby group met for the first time, and it was a small group. It was a very small group. In fact it was me, my other half and two others. But it was fun. We had apples, oranges, a bit of cake, some Cokes and of course we had Taiwanese green tea. Oh we talked about Taiwan too, how unfair it is to be treated like the kid in school with hairy ears. Usual stuff about being bullied by the school bully (China) and how the hall prefect (US in this case) is turning a blind eye to to the milk money extortions.

Fast Forward to Now:

Since then we had several meetings, and lots of food at those meetings. But now we have set our aims at getting Taiwan into the World Health Organisation. The WHO is supposedly to forward the health and well being of human beings world wide but somehow Taiwanese seem to fall outside that rather narrow definition subscribed to by the WHO. This meant that Taiwan has no representation and has no access to all the wonderful fun programs that the WHO runs like athlete's foot eradication, family planning issues (ha.. obviously China's been playing truant on those) and of course the WHO network for telling member countries about infectious diseases. It's some sort of early warning system for warning people not to travel to certain countries because there's an obesity bug that's infecting people living in the US of A or not coming Down Under because you get bitten by the "Slap anothe prawn on the barbie" mosquitoe. I'm still puzzled as I believe CNN would be far better than that. Oh well.

So, here I am writing about Taiwan. It's a fair dinkum country. Been there twice. And must say, food's good. Toilets are clean (better than China and Singapore). It doesn't deserve to be treated the way it is 'cos, not only its democratic but it's also a capitalist state. C'mon, it's more US - like than Australia. Them Taiwanese play baseball. They also eat seaweed but that's another matter altogether.

What I am saying is though, Taiwan deserves to be recognised as a country. It has laws, it has a constitution (convuluted and outdated but its still one!), it looks after human rights, it gives its people a voice, a vote and in the bad old days, it even pays them to vote (not now, I've been assured). Most people believe they aren't Chinese (yep my other half definitely resists that label) so there! If they say they aren't Chinese, who are we to say they are, and besides why do we care what China says, we've always stood up for the underdog, the ones who are brave enough to say "We want freedom. We want to decide our future ourselves!" . Isn't that how all countries are formed?

Ah my 2 cents worth.