四海为家

This ridiculous New York Times op-ed argues that the US should abandon its protection of Taiwan in return for a deal from Beijing that would write off all US debt – in other words, sell out the Taiwanese people’s right to to determine their own political status in return for a small boost to the US economy. To be fair to the New York Times, it’s written by a guest contributor, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of the paper’s editorial board (in fact, I very much hope it doesn’t reflect their views). But nonetheless, the argument is ridiculous on so many levels that it’s hard to understand why the New York Times decided to publish it without (as Fallows suggests) an Onion logo in the corner. This position will obviously never be on the table, but even so, it was nice to see the immediate and very strong reaction against the article online (see the Tsinghua professor Patrick Chovanek’s response here, and James Fallows’ response here). My favourite though, as always, has to be the NME response.