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Show Tuoda. April Fl5sh bluff may have eoslt Chinese Header his positiion By GWYNNE OYER One of the pitfalls of writing aEoul international affairs is you jre required to pretend that the leaders of powerful, important Countries arc competent, intelli- - :ent people. But once in a while, he evidence to the contrary is so stark that you are allowed to ibserve that the emperor actually las no clothes on. ' ! As late as March 22, the Chinese regime was uttering bloodcurdling threat about the dreadful jhjngs that might happen if the voters of Taiwan dared to elect Lee as president, Teng-ht i They fired missiles near Taiwan, they began large-scal- e naval Hercises in the strait that separates Taiwan from the mainland and escalated the rhetoric to the (hey of war. Vhen the United Suite" sent 6 carrier groups to the vicinity if Taiwan in a show of support for is long-tim- e ally. Wen Wei Ho, the d newspaper in fcmg Kong, warned that "with a oflcentrated fire of guided mis-ile- s and artillery, the People's jberation Army can bury an ene-it- y intruder in a sea of fire" It was quite a show : For a week ; or so. all the underemployed military analysts in Washington and the media produced instant strategic anal sis about the likely outcomes of a Taiwan-Chin- a clash (or ui Beijing-controlle- 3T1iina-l?.S- . clash, or Chinese military ambitions toward the Spratley Islands, or whatever eLsti hadn't been done jet). U.S. Seeretaiy of Defence W illiam Perry announced that "America has the thest damned navy in the world," and can sail through the Straits of Taiwan anv time it feels liU.iL 'And then on March 23 the ot- m long-ter- watcher. Willy Lam of the South China Morning Post, told me last year: "There is a near consensus amongst diplomats and China watchers in Beijing that the first one to two y ears after Deng's death would in fact be quite stable. The leadership which Deng has anointed, with President Jiang Zemin as leader, will likely be able to hold the fort for the near term, that means for up to 18 to 24 months" At the time, that seemed a sound prediction. But maybe no longer. There was always some doubt about whether Jiang Zemin, appointed six years ago as Deng's successor, had the skills and the allies needed to survive after his mend departs from the scene. But ers of Taiwan, not the least cowed by all these histrionics, gave Lee an absolute majority of over 55 race). percent (in a At this point, according to the script we were following, the heavens should have begun to fall. The alleged "splittist." the man whom Beijing accuses of being a closet separatist, had won despite all its attempts to scare Taiwanese voters off. So w hen's the inv asion? Not just now, it seems. The four-candida- te anti-Taiw- an propaganda campaign sud- denly toned dow n, and references to military action by the People's Liberation Army have vanished. Beijing is now confining itself to muted declarations of faith in the Taiwanese people's basic loyalty to the idea of one China (blatantly disregarding the fact that almost 80 percent of them voted either for Lee or for the openly separatist candidate. Peng Ming-min- ). Armageddon, if that's what the Chinese government was threatening, has been postponed indefinitely. And the point is this: Armageddon was never on the cards. The whole frenied propaganda exercise in Beijing over the past couple of weeks, and all the asso- that From THE PROVIDENCE (R.I.) N e A panel of the 5th .U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals released a ruling on March 19 that .found the University of Texas law , three-judg- xhools program granting w 0 Li i aw w I I U A LZJZ-v- Jtacte? CHOOSE FROM, ROCK, POP, JAZZ, CLASSICAL, COUNTRY, NEW AGE & MORE! anti-Taiw- nothing would happen until well after the death of paramount leader Deng Xiao-pinnow 91, even though he is just barely alive and has not appeared in public for two years. As Hons Konc's best China- g, g3 independent journalist and historian luse alumns upyear in JO countries. Mark & 1 I ! ! WS! al muster. In too many instances, schools have taken the small leeway seem- ingly granted by Bakke and expanded it beyond any reasonable point .m Chose Gunthers fvtfp 2MB mm ! WO vum 3t H 'One reason we chose Gun there was their advertisements in the newspaper with comments from their customers. We checked with companies from Salt Lake to Provo. They didn't have the service that Gun the rs does and Gun there had the lowest price for the highest efficiency Lennox air conditioner." Mark & Carol Richardson Advanced technology makes central air conditioning both economical and efficient for year round comfort. Financing available for qualified customers. Call Gunthers today! VyC70OSCC3!l JAJCsvartci VANHAUM 5150 GrwtMlHA JXMCt OVJftUtH 1HIIAOUS HoyCoUomio Csstht Vocy Outran JAJCSUY10X acsx ttrsti IM OURMl CtAO VAN Be wmox pro-gran- comti-tution- m. Richardson nt ! w Carol prefer- ential treatment in admissions to designated minorities (blacks and Mexican Americans) violating the U.S. Constitution. The ruling has sent reverberations throughout the academic world: It is one more indication that the federal judiciary is quite properly expressing increased skepticism when faced with race- ' based affirmative action programs. 'specially those imposed bj governments or their agencies (such as state colleges and universities). The case. Hopwood v. Texas, involves four white applicants who were denied admission even 'though they had demonstrably bet- ' ter academic records (grade-poiaverages and scores on the Law School Admissions Test) than numerous blacks and Mexican Americans who were admitted. All three judges agreed that the Iprocram clearly violated white and nondesignated minority appl4th icants' right, under the Amendment, to equal protection of the laws. They pointed out that the law school did not come even close to ' justify ing its program as a remedi- -' aT measure needed to overcome the consequences of the sjstem of racially segregated schooling for- inerly in effect in Texas. After all. Ihe school was giving preferential treatment in admissions to black applicants who came from stales tnatliad never enforced segregated duration and to Mexican Americans whose parents did not live in TU&c (or even in the United Statu) in the era of segregated edu. ttion. T judges also rejected the ji sent l's other defense of its seeking a "diverse" student body. They concluded that the program's definition of diversity was far too vague, and that the methods used to achieve diversity were far too broad, to pass "si Page COMPACT DISCS STARTING AT action gets poor grade in school ruling JOURNAL-BULLETI- on faces. Finally, and perhaps fatally, he seems to have cut the umbilical cord that bound him to the moribund Deng. The scuttlebutt in Beijing is that he muzled Deng's family last month in order to stop them from voicing Deng's own reservations about the campaign. That is entirely credible, for Deng would never have been so stupid. Ev en less do we know the true political colours of the contenders, all of whom have been forced to bow to the prevailing ideological winds all their lives. But China could be a very different place a v ear from now . Gwynne Dyer is a London-buse- d Affirmative l'( O I Pnno, l uh we may well have been mistaken to body knew that the Beijing regime lacks the military strength, the political will or even the internal cohesion to attack Taiwan. The result is that the Chinese military, and Communist hardliners generally, have been humiliated. Until last month, the general was I IX assume that everything would stay on hold until Deng actually died. Which brings us back to the business about the emperor's new clothes, for this was not a clever move. Jiang completely miscalculated the effects of his actions on Taiwan: His empty threats actually bwsted Lee's vote. Worse yet, he has left the soldiers whose support he sought with egg all over their ciated military swashbuckling, was complete bluff from start to finish. 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