Yes. As predicted, Hu is cementing his image as the tolerant, benevolent dictator who reached out to the Dalai Lama and the Catholic Church, breaking a half-century tradition of reeking of intolerance and celebrating persecution. It’s a marriage made in heaven, and the jilted suitor is Taiwan.
After more than half a century of hostility, China and the Roman Catholic Church have inched within reach of normal relations, a historic shift aimed at improving the lives of 10 million Chinese who regularly practice the faith, according to leaders and analysts on both sides of the divide.
The irregular contacts, often made at meetings in Rome between Vatican diplomats and Chinese Communist Party officials, remain clouded by mutual suspicion, they said. Party elders particularly fear that the church could become a rallying point for anti-government agitation as it did in Eastern Europe.
But the process has overcome a major stumbling block with recent signals from the Vatican that it is willing to break with Taiwan and set up diplomatic relations with Beijing as part of an overall accord guaranteeing the church’s role in China.
Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun of Hong Kong, the senior Roman Catholic cleric in China, said the Vatican’s readiness to drop ties with Taiwan represents a major gain for the Chinese government and is the main motive for Beijing’s decision to soften hostility toward the church. Other analysts noted that the reconciliation talks also fit into a broad effort by China to establish normal trade and other relations with countries around the world, including heavily Catholic nations in Central America whose diplomatic loyalties now lie with Taiwan.
Definitely read the whole thing.
All that matters at the end of the day is perception, and the perception of “Red China” is changing in front of our eyes, from the prickly, paranoid, North Korea-like xenophobes to a softer, kinder, gentler, more lovable police state. As said in my earlier post on Hu’s diplomatic finesse, this hardly means Hu can now claim sainthood. But it does mean he’s winning massive victories on the public relations front, solidfying his image as the star in the ascendant, leader of a more tolerant nation and “friend to all the earht,” as the sign at the Beijing airport tells all newly arriving tourists. And it is at the expense of the US, increasingly seen (thanks in large part to man-child Bush) as the intolerant, volatile, vituperative out-of-control jingoist state that threatens the safety of everyone on the planet. How is that for role reversal? How is that for a coup? Chalk one up for Hu. And yes, it’s of little consolation to poor Hao Wu and countless other victims of the Party’s magnanimity. But their voices are small and weak, and most of the world hardly knows they exist. And Hu understands that. Shrewd, shrewd.
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