A spokesman for New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said plans for the official welcome were altered because of the protest.

"Officials were aware that the presence of a Tibetan flag outside this morning would cause gross offense to the Chinese visitors," spokesman Mike Munro said, adding that officials decided to "bring him straight into the building."

Chinese officials had demanded that police remove the protester with the Free Tibet flag from the parliament's front steps and shield him from Wu's path.

The protesters, Green Party co-leader Rod Donald, said that police declined and that he had permission from the parliamentary speaker to be near where Wu was to alight from his vehicle, as a half-dozen other protesters waved Free Tibet flags further away on the lawn.

"This is the New Zealand parliament, not Tiananmen Square," Donald said. "And this is New Zealand, a democracy -- not China, a dictatorship."

Friends of Tibet spokeswoman Ellen Blake said the protest was a success.

"He ducked in the side door. They saw the Tibetan flag and they hate seeing the Tibetan flag because ... they know they have oppressed the people of Tibet," she said.

At a state luncheon later in the day, Wu said relations between China and New Zealand had "contributed to peace and development in the Asia-Pacific region."

China's health record raises concern

Hong Kong media reported that a case of foot-and-mouth disease was identified about two weeks ago in a rural area outside Beijing, and that more than 2,000 infected cows had been exterminated and quietly buried. However, when the media started investigating, Beijing officials denied that there had been an outbreak of the disease. In view of the Chinese government's prior record of handling epidemics, no one should be surprised if Beijing is frantically trying to cover up an outbreak.

There is an old Chinese saying that "family shame should not be revealed to the outside." While there is nothing wrong with covering up one's own shortcomings, the same cannot be said if such concealment could harm and injure others.

When it comes to matters as serious as the outbreak of an epidemic, concealment could destroy the lives of many innocent people. Under the circumstances, Beijing's repeated attempts at covering up the spread of epidemics, most notably demonstrated in its handling of the SARS outbreak, is completely unacceptable.

Concealment of matters such as these, by itself, is completely at odds with the importance and respect that should be attached to people's health and lives. In this regard, Beijing's selfish conduct already exposed the fact that it has no regard for fundamental values that are universally embraced by the modern world. It also demonstrated the feudal ideas to which the Beijing regime still clings. What makes its conduct even more unforgivable is the fact that experience should have taught the Chinese government that it is completely incapable of controlling epidemics on its own, as the SARS outbreak showed. By refusing to disclose information about epidemics until the matter is completely out of control, Beijing deprives itself of much-needed outside help from international organizations such as the World Health Organization and from neighboring countries.

In this regard, Taiwan is probably the biggest potential victim owing to the geographic proximity of the two countries. For example, in June 1999, foot-and-mouth disease broke out among cattle on Kinmen. Despite a large-scale campaign to exterminate the sick animals, the disease still spread to Taiwan. It was later discovered that the epidemic had been caused by sick cattle smuggled from China to Kinmen. As a result, there is still a ban on the importation of live cattle from Kinmen to Taiwan.

The possible outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the health and sanitary hazards to which Taiwan is currently exposed. Although bird flu has now spread to both Shandong and Jiangsu, leading AIDS researcher David Ho pointed out in a recent article in Nature magazine that China's epidemic defense system is still totally inadequate to combat avian influenza. News of this sort raises concern not only among the people of China, but also among their unfortunate neighbors, including Taiwan.

Therefore, it was not at all surprising that the death of a Taiwanese man who had just returned from China almost triggered nationwide panic about the possibility of a recurrence of SARS, although it was later verified that the man had not died from the disease. This demonstrates how much the people of Taiwan were traumatized by the spread of SARS from China to Taiwan in 2003.

In view of the serious health hazards China poses, the World Health Assembly's refusal to admit Taiwanese observers because of objections from Beijing is acutely unacceptable.

China's media profits from jingoism

By Liu Xiao biao

Explanations abound for the fevered anti-Japanese protests that broke out across China last month. From the Chinese perspective, of course, the blame falls on the Japanese government for its reluctance to apologize for the crimes Japan committed in World War II. But the Chinese media also played an ignominious role, publishing slanted articles on Japan that helped to fan the fire.

Nationalism has been a prominent element in Chinese media in recent years. Strident articles critical of the US, Japan and Taiwan appear with increasing frequency and receive ever more prominent placement. Many see the government's hand behind this trend, but focusing on official influence risks overlooking how market pressures have pushed China's media in this direction.

Before China began opening its economy in 1978, media bosses were appointed and controlled by the government. Journalists and editors were, in effect, government officials. Needless to say, the Communist Party and the state paid for all operating costs, and nobody was much concerned about making money. The main concern was not attracting readers, listeners and viewers, but avoiding political mistakes.

For newspapers and magazines, circulation was guaranteed by the government, which urged people to "study the Party newspapers" and forced work units to buy them. Radio and TV enjoyed the same built-in audience. In the 30 years following the establishment of the People's Republic of China, no media outlet ran even a single commercial advertisement.

As Deng Xiaoping's reforms evolved, and especially after Deng's "tour of the South" in 1992, when he signaled permission for high-speed marketization of the economy, China's media changed beyond recognition.

Whereas in 1978 there were only 186 newspapers and a handful of magazines and broadcast outlets, today China has roughly 2,200 newspapers, 9,000 magazines, 1,000 radio stations and 420 TV stations, plus a growing proliferation of cable TV outlets. Most of these outlets no longer receive full financial support from the government and must rely on advertising revenue to survive and grow.

What topics do consumers most care about? One is government corruption. As economic inequities and social conflict in China grow more acute, ordinary people are becoming increasingly angry. In these circumstances, many on the business side of the Chinese media regard critical reports on crime and official corruption as a powerful weapon in the fight for greater market share and profitability.

Owing to great sensitivity about stories that cast China's leadership in a bad light, these popular reports are frequently banned, editors are fired and media outlets that publish or broadcast them are often punished. In some cases, they are shut down.

Prevented from criticizing the country's leaders and reporting fully and objectively on domestic affairs, China's media often finds it expedient to turn its critical gaze outward. This is politically safe because, in one sense, to criticize the outside world -- especially Japan and the US -- is to praise China's government.

It is also profitable. Even as China's position in the world continues to rise and its people become more self-confident, China's history of weakness before the Western powers and Japan sustains a "victim culture" that leaves most Chinese sensitive to any foreign challenge. Publishing jingoistic, anti-foreign articles plays to national sensitivities that always simmer, and thus can easily be brought to a boil, with obvious benefits for the bottom line.

A personal anecdote serves to illustrate how the market, as much as government censorship, is often responsible for this type of editorial decision: A few years ago, the editors of a Beijing-based weekly with which I am acquainted were deadlocked over which article to put on their front page. The choice was between a minor story critical of Taiwan and a larger piece about a domestic issue of potentially historic significance. Unable to get his staff to reach a consensus, the chief executive decided to ask the newspaper's distributor for his opinion. The distributor had not graduated from high school, but he knew readers' tastes well.

"Condemn Taiwan, of course," he said.

The chief executive issued his order accordingly.

While reports that cater to the sometimes virulent nationalist sentiments of readers, viewers and listeners can succeed in garnering a larger market share -- as in any other capitalist country -- they can also mislead. The media may make money, but as the recent protests suggest, an excess of such market-driven jingoism can damage a nation's interests.

As the old Chinese expression goes, qihu nanxia: "Once one mounts a tiger, it is hard to dismount."

Liu Xiaobiao is a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

Hsieh's 'one China' line is suicidal

By Lin Cho-shui

Although a "constitutional one China" is the talisman of the pan-blue camp, it no longer has much currency in mainstream legal circles in Taiwan. It is therefore surprising that Premier Frank Hsieh should make so much of it.

Before becoming a Supreme Court judge, Hsu Tzong-li, who participated in the drafting of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC), wrote a paper on cross-strait relations which had as its point of departure the idea of sovereignty. He concluded that after the revision of the Constitution to include the Additional Articles, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait had a "special state-to-state relationship."

This sparked vigorous debate among legal scholars through the 1990s, and many of the papers that this debate generated were collected in the book Theory of Two States published in 2000, which looked at the cross-strait relationship from the perspective of both domestic and international law. It overwhelming concluded that "constitutional one China" as a theory was defunct.

Beijing's "Anti-Secession" Law states that there is only "one China," but the fact is that the Additional Articles and the lifting of the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion pronounced the end of our claim of jurisdiction over China. When we restricted sovereignty of the ROC to Taiwan, the two sides of the Strait became separate nations. The use of terms such as "unification," "free area" and "mainland area" are no more than rhetorical devices to satisfy ideological demands of a nation in the process of partition, and really do not have much significance.

The word "unification" can be found in the constitutions of all divided countries. But its significance in the constitutions of the two Germanys and the two Koreas is different from that of China and Taiwan. In the constitutions of the divided Germanys and Koreas, unification was an imperative, a duty and a goal that the government was obligated to strive for. But in the Additional Articles, unification is regarded as a possibility, and there is no obligation for its realization.

Moreover, the Additional Articles are designed "to meet the requisites of the nation prior to national unification," and in that sense are similar to China's Anti-Secession Law. The difference is that while the Anti-Secession Law accepts that unification has not taken place, it denies the legitimacy of the ROC, and defines Taiwan as territory that has not been pacified. But in abolishing the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion, Taiwan effectively recognized the legitimacy of the People's Republic of China as a separate government.

From Taiwan's perspective at least, there are two legitimately constituted central governments, one on either side of the Strait. In this case, how can there be any talk of "one China?"

More importantly, the legal rights outlined in the Additional Articles are confined to "the populace of the free areas of the ROC," and totally ignore the rights of people of the "mainland areas." From the perspective of domestic law, such an expropriation of rights can only be seen as a revolutionary act, in which a new sovereignty was created and Taiwan became a separate entity.

The three main laws established on the basis of the Additional Articles, namely the National Security Law, the Act Governing Relations Between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area and the Act Governing Relations with Hong Kong and Macau, are based on the immigration law, entry and exit laws and international commercial law, which means "the people in the Chinese mainland areas," in terms of their rights and obligations, have become foreigners.

Whether we look at it from the point of view of de facto sovereignty or the structure and the practice of legal rights, these all fail to give substance to the contention that there is "one China" across the Taiwan Strait. When the actual situation and a symbolic structure are in direct contention, it is only right and proper that this should be regarded as a "special state-to-state relationship."

There is no basis for the realization of "one China." Under our Constitution we may not take action to quell the "Communist rebellion," any more than we could arrest Tang Shubei, deputy director of China's Taiwan Affairs Office, on charges of desertion or tax evasion when he visits Taiwan. So when Hsieh says we must hold firm to the "one China" principle, is he advocating that we act against Chinese officials visiting Taiwan?

Looked at from the standpoint of international law, Hsieh's advocacy of "one China" seems to be suicidal. In the past, China used the principle of exclusive recognition in international law to maintain that "there is only one China. The People's Republic of China is its legitimate government and Taiwan is part of China." This infuriated the pan-blue camp.

China subsequently changed this to "there is only one China. Both Taiwan and Mainland China belong to China" and that "sovereignty is indivisible." But really, from the perspective of exclusive recognition, there is really no difference between the former and the latter formulation.

During his visit to China, People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong praised China's "Taiwan and Mainland China belong to China" formulation and was very pleased with his own expression of "two sides, one China," but really this is no more than the pan-blue camp fantasizing about the possibilities of China's new formulation.

So who would have thought that China would use the same old "Taiwan and Mainland China belong to China" formula to block Taiwan's WHO bid?

If we look at the Hu-Soong communique and the incident regarding Taiwan's WHO bid in tandem, we can see that Soong is doing no more than parading bankrupt rhetorical devices. And if that is the case, is there really any need for Hsieh to carry on talking about a "one China" structure?

Lin Cho-shui is a DPP legislator.