Word: matsu
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Little, alas, has changed in the 32 years since Kennedy and Nixon squabbled interminably about whether to defend two worthless chunks of rock off the coast of China called Quemoy and Matsu. Presidential debates have consistently failed to give voters what they need to make an informed decision: a road map to chart what the next four years would be like with each candidate as President...
...campaign and almost unhorsed him in a race he won by less than 120,000 votes. It is a trivia question to ask which two islands off the coast of mainland China received inordinate attention during the second and third television debates between Kennedy and Nixon (Quemoy and Matsu). Both candidates dedicated to strong national defense. The Soviet Union and the Cold War and the nuclear threat dominated everyone's horizon, with anxieties rising over the U-2 spy plane that the Soviets shot down on May 1, 1960, and the Soviets' launching of Sputnik 1 three years earlier...
...January 1979, China stopped its alternate-day shelling of the Taiwan-held offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu; located less than ten miles from the Fujian coast, the islands were long regarded as symbols of the ongoing civil war between the People's Republic and the Republic of China. Fujian authorities boast that they have built five docking shelters along the province's coast for fishermen from Taiwan and that they have helped some 1,000 of them who ran into bad weather or engine breakdowns. Meanwhile, Fujian officials call for tours and even investments by their "Taiwan...
...saying something new. But candid admissions of such practices by their predecessors are beginning to turn up in the history books. Remember Eisenhower's contorted syntax in press conferences? Jim Hagerty, Ike's press secretary, was worried about what the President might say about the 1955 Quemoy-Matsu crisis, but Ike reassured him: "Don't worry, Jim, if that question comes up, I'll just confuse them...
...screen argument between the candidates was less than edifying at the time and now echoes with irony. A disproportionate amount of time was taken up by the tiny Nationalist Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, some five miles off the mainland Chinese coast. Nixon argued that they should be defended by the U.S. against any Communist attack; Kennedy insisted that they should be defended only if assaulted in a clear prelude to an invasion of Taiwan, some 100 miles across the Formosa Strait. Also argued excessively was the issue of U.S. prestige. Kennedy contended that it had fallen dangerously throughout...