All three former Shanghai mayors - President Jiang, Zhu and Wang Daohan, Chief negotiator on Taiwan - have visited the Center and are on a first-name basis with Xie, a member of the prestigious Academia Sinica, former president of Fudan, and professor of physics with a Ph.D. In that discipline from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) plus a degree from Smith College.
Downtown, in the coffee shops of the old French Concession, talk of Taiwan is surprisingly open among intellectuals. Such contingencies as "Offer Taiwan a Vice Premiorship," "Create a broad Greater China alignment without attention to sovereignty," "Propose a loose commonwealth for now with an open-ended timetable" and others are heard being debated by think tank researchers.
Also heard, of course, are recitations of contrasting military doctrine which holds that Taiwan can be beaten by force at some point "if necessary." The Peoples Liberation Army (PLM) has its own thinkers who believe the Taiwan Strait sea lanes take the issue beyond nationalism to become more of a strategic security question. But, it would be a mistake for outsiders to make too much of the differences between mainstream academic and military positions on Taiwan.
Nevertheless, with Wang at the head of the negotiating team from China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Zhu running the economy under Jiang's overall leadership. Some new tactical movement is expected on Taiwan from the "Shanghai faction" come springtime, even though the ultimate goal is unchanged. (1)
Meanwhile, conversations confirm that Shanghai should have an English - language daily newspaper that eventually could record such debates and widen almost non-existent press freedom. There once were four such newspapers here back in 1934. Today there is only the twice-weekly Shanghi Star tabloid, an anemic, mostly business handout-filled little brother of Beijing's English-language official China Daily.
The Star is waiting to explode or in its place, a joint-venture newspaper, which is unlikely.
The Associated Press has opened a Shanghai bureau, following The New York Times, Reuter and a half-dozen Japanese newspapers in recognition of the newsworthiness of this largest city of the world's most populous (1.2 billion) and fastest-growing (low double digit) nation.
Millions of dollars of potential advertising is waiting to be placed in such a newspaper by the multinational firms which Shanghai has attracted. American, Japanese and Hong Kong expatriate captains of business here told me as much, noting English increasingly the lingua franca of business as it has been in Hong Kong.
