this article in kuro5hin on the conflict between taiwan and china says next to nothing. and the few things it does say are lacking any understanding of the situation that couldn't be taken straight from the local news.
"The official US policy concerning the China-Taiwan conflict should remain ambiguous in order to maintain the nervous peace that exists across the Taiwan Straits." i.e. nothing should change. this is not only a boring argument, but also impossible. change happens. the "change nothing" argument is backed up by exaggerating the seriousness of the dispute. "The conflict between China and Taiwan" is not "one of the most critical situations in the world today" (ten minutes with cnn with provide you with a long list of more critical situations), nor is it "raging." it's being played out as passively as possible.
and for good reason. as the author points out, "The island of Taiwan is a de facto independent state." taiwan is not so valuable that it's worth the trouble of an actual military conflict and subsequent attempts to passify the citizes of a former taiwan. reffering to taiwan as "an inalienable part of China" is as far from practical reality as referring to america as "an inalienable part of Britian." the citizens of taiwan have (in many cases unfortunately) gone to great lengths to abandon nearly all ties to mainland china to the extent that children in taiwan are generally unaware that taiwan has any more relation to china than, say, thailand.
this article also perpetuates the myth that america is the rightful police force to the world, while maintaining that we should not let the world know on what rules we base our policing: "The biggest problem is a conflict of interests; a conflict between the political and diplomatic interests of the administration and the principles of the American democracy." ha. at least one commenter caught that this statement is in no way rooted in historical reality: "The US has a funny notion of what 'democratic principles' mean outside of their frontiers." i can't think of one conflict into which america entered because democratic principles were considered more important than economic gain.
the reality is that something is going to change regarding taiwan and chinese, and if america does not clarify its position prior to that change, it will end up betraying both its own political and diplomatic interests, as well as the "principles of the American democracy," just as it did during the chinese civil war.