A Piece of ME

Taipei and Beijing: attitudes to historical truth
Li Datong

A comparison between Taiwan and mainland China shows that the chinese Communist Party is still incapable of confronting and discussing the truth of its past, says Li Datong.
12 - 12 - 2007


In 1995, a group of historians from the People's Republic of China (PRC) visited Taiwan to take part in a conference marking the fiftieth anniversary of victory in the war against Japan. As they entered the Academia Sinica, a young Taiwanese scholar jokingly called out: "The communist bandits are here!" Although the words were only spoken in jest, academics from both sides of the Straits found them extremely interesting and made them a subject of discussion.

China’s communist princelings
Li Datong

The distinctive experience of China's rising political generation may turn dynastic succession into real political reform, says Li Datong.
17 - 10 - 2007


The seventeenth national congress of the Chinese Communist Party on 15-19 October 2007 is attracting high levels of interest from the foreign media. According to some reports, more than 1,000 foreign journalists have already applied to cover the event. Many of these reporters have been contacting me for explanations of the issues involved, and one prominent subject has been the rising political stars who may soon be promoted to positions of greater power. It seems to me that there is a lot of misunderstanding of the competition between the so-called "princelings" and their putative different factions, so this column attempts to clarify this by providing a brief analysis of this question.