I've just returned from a few days in Shanghai, my second of hopefully many trips to China. On my first visit, to Beijing last year, I was bitten by the China bug. Those of you reading this who've visited the country may know what I mean. It's the condition whereby you see a tiny part of China and you want to see a whole lot more. You leave the country thinking about the next occasion when time and money will allow you to return.
Thers's something about the size of the country which grips you; the immensity of its geography, the length of its history; the richness of its culture, which just makes you want to see more, to hear more, to learn more, to eat more, all the time knowing that you'll never be finished. You'll never look at China and think "right done that, on to Thailand".
But for sucha bewitching country, China has a quite appalling government. Its suppression of free speech and basic human rights and its brutal treatment of minority groups are quite well known in the West. What is less well known is its bullying attitude to Taiwan. I have to admit that I'm not unbiasssed on this issue having spent nearly two years living on the island.
In the ten months between visits, nothing seems to have changed in China's attitude to Taiwan, or as the boys and girls at Xinhua news agency would have you say, "Taiwn province". Unfortunately on this occasion, I didn't get talking to any locals about this issue as I had done in Beijing, happily discussing the merits of Chiang Kai-shek with a postcard seller in Tainanmen Square, with secret poilice all around. I did however have a chance to see how the regime's mouthpieces are depicting cross-strait relations.
It's a case of same old, same old unfortunately. The same bellicose rhetoric, the same tired mantras and the same pig-headed refusal to acknowledge reality.
Beijing's narrative on this issue portrays the island's president, Chen Shui-bian as the crux of the problem. He is, according to Xinhua, a "splittist" (a word I haven't heard since the last time I watched "Life of Brian"), bent on separating Taiwan form "the Motherland" againt the wishes of people on both sides of the strait. The issue of the "Beijing Review" which I bought used exactly the same term to describe the murderers in Beslan, no coincidence in my mind.
But the problem for China is that it has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the conflict. President Chen is not some extremist dragging his country down a path it does not wish to go. He is the democratically elected leader of Taiwan. In this year's election he (just) won a majority of votes. He speaks for Taiwan.
Yes, it's certainly true, as this year's election demonstrated, that public opinion in Taiwan is split. Some people want independence now, some unification now while the great maass of the population floats between these two extremes. But none of this changes the fact that Chen is the legitimate voice of Taiwan. China's problem, as it may discover to its cost one day, is not with Chen Shui-bian, it's with the poeple of Taiwan.
As the regime in Beijing misreads the problem, so it misreads the solution. China sticks fanatically to its "one China" doctrine, the belief that there can be only one Chinese state in this world, and it's the People's Republic. Foreign governments are prompted to repeat their support for this mantra on a regular basis.
Well, you can say "one China" in any langauge you want, but it doesn't change the fact that there are two Chinas, and there have been for the past fifty-five years. There are two Chinese leaders, not one; two Chinese flags, not one; two Chinese armies, not one, And de facto, though not yet de jure, there are two Chinese states, not one.
Beiijing's offer of Hong Kong style autonomy to Taiwan, "one country, two sysytems", simply won't work. Such an offer ignores crucial differences between the former Britsh colony and the "rebel povince". Firstly Taiwan, unlike Hiong Kong, is a democracy, not a colony run by an Englishman. The Taiwanese fought long and hard for the right to elect their own leader and they won't relinquish this lightly. Secondly, and more improtantly, Tawian is not, as Hong Kong was, bound by a set handover time. The island is not something to be given over ina treaty, it is a powerful country in its own right. It does not have to rush to a settlement at the behest of others.
In any case, the experience of Hong Kong since 1997 hardly encourages support for the "one country, two systems" model in Taiwan. The area is now run by Tung Chee-hwa, a widely reviled puppet of Beijing. Autonomy in Hong Kong is a charade.
If the Politburo really do want unity then they will have to come up with something a lot better than "one country, two systems". More like "one nation, two states". But if this week's visit is anything to go by, such new thinking is a long way off. China is keeping up the rhetoric, convening conferences where it warns of the dire implications for regional peace if Chen goes too far.
But the more China beats its chest, the more it alienates the people of Taiwan. Rather than wailing aboiut the "splittists" in power in Taipei,China should instead reflect on why support for their "one China" doctrine is slowly ebbing away on the island. I don't see this happening anytime soon.
It may be a long time before I can read a newspaper in China without getting angry.