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FORMOSA, CHINA AND THE U.N. by Lung-Chu & Harold D. Lasswell Chen

FORMOSA, CHINA AND THE U.N.

By

Pub Date: Oct. 16th, 1967
Publisher: St. Martin's

The authors undertake to show what's wrong with the status quo--13 million Formosans repressed by a Nationalist Chinese dictatorship still claiming that it will regain the mainland--and why their plan for giving Peking U.N. membership as China, while building a pro-U.S. Formosa ruled by and for Formosans, is preferable. Their case rests on analyses of international law, U.N. rules and politics, Communist aspirations toward hegemony in Formosa, the pro-Chiang lobby in the U.S., and the exigencies of ""new nationhood."" The authors' relatively slight effort to put the problem in the context of U.S. Asian policies, as well as admitted difficulties in implementing their plan, qualify their hopes that Formosa will become (with the help of a plebiscite and enlightened U.S. guidance) a nice little welfare state with population control, republican institutions, and a nonpartisan military. The book is often vague and repetitive on subjects which call for a Swift; but it has interest as an exercise in Practical social science, value as a reference work, and an academic audience primed for anything by the prominent, recently unproductive Lasswell.