Word: mainlanders
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...That independent spirit has kept the Isle of Man out of the European Union. Though it's a Crown dependency reliant on Britain for defense and foreign relations, it runs its own, near-autonomous 1,000-year-old system of government. (To the Manx, Britain is not the mainland; the island is the mainland, and Britain is obliquely referred to as "across," as in "What's the weather like across?") True, this separateness has encouraged only slow social change: birching, or beating with a birch rod, for crimes of violence against a person was still going strong in the 1970s...
...package of weapons but hold off on supplying it the Aegis anti-missile warfare system. Washington observers believe he wasn't trying to signal a new policy - even if his words did just that - and some suggest he may have confused arming the island to defend itself against the mainland with the idea of going to war to defend Taiwan...
...riddled as it is with what policymakers call "strategic ambiguity." The U.S. recognizes that China and Taiwan are ultimately part of the same sovereign entity, but opposes any move to reunify them by force. While it undertakes to supply Taiwan with enough weaponry to ward off invasion by the mainland, it also strenuously avoids sending signals that might encourage the island to declare formal independence - an eventuality that would almost certainly provoke a war across the Taiwan Strait. The long-term view associated with "strategic ambiguity" is that economic and political developments currently under way will break down the barriers...
...until capitalism works its wonders on the mainland, the U.S.-China-Taiwan relationship is a game of three-dimensional chess in which the most complex dimension may well be the words chosen by Washington to cloak its policy ambiguities - and complexities of language have never been President Bush's strong suit...
...hard to know how far he really intended to change things is because a number of his advisers, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, had been outspoken in recent years in suggesting that the previous strategic ambiguity had lost its usefulness because of changed attitudes on the mainland and in Taiwan, and that the U.S. therefore needed to make a more clear statement that it would come to Taiwan's aid in the event of an attack...