Word: straitly
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...Chen might never have won the presidency in 2000 if China had not branded him a "dangerous separatist" whose election would bring war to the Taiwan Strait. Taiwanese, tired of China's bellicose rhetoric, rallied around him. But this time, until the referendum issue erupted, Beijing had deliberately held its fire. That, coupled with a steady drop in Chen's popularity over the years, apparently forced the President to seek a fresh squabble with China. "China is a useful enemy for Chen," says Su Chi, a senior policy adviser to the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party. "It's a scarecrow...
...Chiang had once represented the authoritarian strongman presiding over a booming capitalist economy offering low-cost manufactured goods to the U.S. market and raising the living standards of its people, today that role has been usurped on the mainland by the Chinese Communist Party. The tension across the Taiwan Strait remains high, but its terms have changed. Today, Beijing's claim to Taiwan is an expression of the nationalist mantle adopted by a Communist Party serving as the authoritarian steward of a booming capitalist economy, while the Taiwanese electorate - having attained a democratic voice over their own destiny...
...handles Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province that must ultimately be reunited with the mainland. In 1996, when Taiwan's first direct presidential elections aroused concern on the mainland that democracy would draw the island further away from unification, Beijing reacted angrily by lobbing missiles over the Taiwan Strait. Four years later, the pro-independence background of Taiwan's current President Chen Shui-bian elicited a televised harangue by former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji on the eve of the presidential polls. But during this year's presidential walk-up, China has been strangely quiet, even though some of Chen...
...consultant. "The Chinese government's confidence in dealing with diplomatic issues has increased and they don't haggle over every little issue," says Guo Dingping, a political science professor at Shanghai's Fudan University. "They're now focusing more on long-term interests instead of insignificant altercations across the strait." Still, politicians in Taiwan caution that subtlety doesn't mean China has softened its cross-strait stance. "Beijing may be showing self-restraint in public," says a high-ranking government aide in Taipei, "but in private they seem to be trying to give us hell." Indeed, China is steadily chipping...
...senior al Qaeda agent captured by Moroccan authorities in June 2002 has been identified as an officer in Saddam’s secret police. Abu Zubayr had worked in terrorist training camps in Afghanistan prior to Sept. 11, and later plotted to target U.S. and British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar. During interrogations, he has purportedly said that Iraq provided chemical weapons, and weapons training, to al Qaeda...