On his Taiwan focused blog, The View From Taiwan, Michael Turton has a great post (pics included) on the United States Postal Service’s apparent practice of stamping packages addressed to Taiwan with “Taiwan, Province of China.”

Turton’s post includes lots of details, possible conclusions and good questions regarding this practice, so check it out. Turton concludes:

Let me add this simple fact: the policy of the US government is, and has been for the last five decades, that the status of Taiwan is undetermined. As a government entity, USPS should not be flouting official policy.

Good stuff.

Thanks to Nicky Cheese for the link.

These poor, hopeless, angry people exist by grubbing for scraps of cobalt and copper ore in the filth and dust of abandoned copper mines in Congo, sinking perilous 80ft shafts by hand, washing their finds in cholera-infected streams full of human filth, then pushing enormous two-hundredweight loads uphill on ancient bicycles to the nearby town of Likasi where middlemen buy them to sell on, mainly to Chinese businessmen hungry for these vital metals.

To see them, as they plod miserably past, is to be reminded of pictures of unemployed miners in Thirties Britain, stumbling home in the drizzle with sacks of coal scraps gleaned from spoil heaps.

Except that here the unsparing heat makes the labour five times as hard, and the conditions of work and life are worse by far than any known in England since the 18th Century.

Many perish as their primitive mines collapse on them, or are horribly injured without hope of medical treatment. Many are little more than children. On a good day they may earn $3, which just supports a meagre existence in diseased, malarial slums.

We had been earlier to this awful pit, which looked like a penal colony in an ancient slave empire.

Defeated, bowed figures toiled endlessly in dozens of hand-dug pits. Their faces, when visible, were blank and without hope.

We had been turned away by a fat, corrupt policeman who pretended our papers weren’t in order, but who was really taking instructions from a dead-eyed, one-eared gangmaster who sat next to him.

By the time we returned with more official permits, the gangmasters had readied the ambush.

The diggers feared – and their evil, sinister bosses had worked hard on that fear – that if people like me publicised their filthy way of life, then the mine might be closed and the $3 a day might be taken away.

I can give you no better explanation in miniature of the wicked thing that I believe is now happening in Africa.

Out of desperation, much of the continent is selling itself into a new era of corruption and virtual slavery as China seeks to buy up all the metals, minerals and oil she can lay her hands on: copper for electric and telephone cables, cobalt for mobile phones and jet engines – the basic raw materials of modern life.

It is no accident that in many parts of the world where thuggery and misery rule,  Beijing can be found hard at work keeping things that way.

As an interesting aside, here is Peter’s brother Christopher Hitchens on Beijing’s numerous client regimes and captive nations.

In a recent speech in Thailand, just before heading off to the Olympics in Beijing, U.S. President Bush tweaked China over its human rights record, including the detention of political dissidents, human rights and religious activists and other human rights abuses by Beijing.

In response, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman tweaked right back at Mr. Bush:

“We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues.”

Really?

In 2007, my Independence Institute collegue Dave Kopel and I wrote about Costa Rica dropping diplomatic relations with Taiwan in order to enter into a stronger economic and diplomatic relations with China:

In June, Costa Rica ended nearly sixty years of diplomatic relations with Taiwan in order to establish diplomatic relations with China. Not only a victory in Beijing’s efforts to smother Taiwan’s independence, the Costa Rican switch is further evidence of China’s growing influence in Latin America—a growing threat to democracy and to U.S. interests.

Announcing the diplomatic switch, Costa Rican president Oscar Arias cited a desire to strengthen commercial ties and “attract investment” from China. Arias then thanked Taiwan for its “solidarity and co-operation” over the last sixty years, noting that Taiwan has been “very generous.”

But the next day, Arias denounced Taiwan for being “stingy.” Sounding as though he had taken emergency talking points from Beijing, Arias grumbled, “Considering the few friends they have, they don’t treat them very well.” Arias continued, “Without a doubt, we will get more help from China.”

So if Beijing actually believes that no country should interfere in the internal affairs of another, why would Costa Rica have to end its relationship with Taiwan in order to “get more help from China?”

As Kopel and I continue:

China insists that the price of trade relations is the severance of diplomatic relations with independent Taiwan. A 2005 Heritage Foundation report warned that “China has launched a major diplomatic offensive in Central America and the Caribbean to stamp out Taiwan’s diplomatic legitimacy in the region and supplant Taiwan’s influence among these young democracies with its own.” The report observed that China has been “translating its economic success -and its search for resources to fuel its economic growth—into greater influence in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

So perhaps the U.S. should go ahead and call Beijing on its bluster about not interfering in other countries’ affairs by re-entering into formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and maybe even throw in a trade deal with Taiwan. Then when Beijing throws its predictable temper tantrum, the U.S. can gently remind the regime that other countries (China) should not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations (in this case, foreign policy decisions by the U.S.).