From China.com:

About America Selling Arms to Taiwan

America is a country where politics serve economics. Actually, Americans don’t have any broad political goals. Their behavior, to phrase it colloquially, appears to be very realist; of course, it’s because they do things serving their own interest that it seems realist.

To a businessperson, profit is prestige. Without profit you have no prestige, and it is like this for America, their prestige comes from their profit. To a businessperson, even if it’s just a small trickle of profit it’s important. Even if this tiny profit will cause them to offend others, generally they will still take it, and restore relations with the offended parties later, if they think it’s worth it. America is also like this.

For Americans, it serves great national interest to make things go poorly between [Mainland] China and Taiwan. In the context of modern global security, possibly no one would dare to be fighting battles and ultimately having a [military] showdown, so struggles take the bloodless forms of attempting to change culture, politics, economics, etc. [Struggles also manifest through] trying to keep one’s own country stable while trying to make the opposing nation unstable. In chaos there is profit, and perhaps in chaos the opposition can be undermined. This is just like the way the US treated the Soviet Union.

America is selling arms to Taiwan again. As far as we’re concerned, this is old, stinking news; what is America’s meaning [in doing this]?

The US is stirring up new conflict between the two shores [i.e., China and Taiwan]. [America is saying,] you can talk, but talking is only talking, you can’t get too close and definitely can’t unify, because that wouldn’t be in the best interests of us Americans.

It’s been sixty years, Taiwan is a painful spot that is difficult for our nation to hide; for many reasons, the Taiwan problem has never been resolved. Now we’ve come to the best time ever for cross-strait relations, but the Americans’ behavior has once cast a dark shadow [over the progress], can we just allow this to take its course?

In truth, I personally feel that America can sell as many weapons to Taiwan as it wants, all that it takes is for us to be willing and those weapons are ours. Didn’t America once give us [China] many weapons via Chiang Kai-Shek? The Nationalist Party has never been able to accomplish anything great, to say nothing of the Democratic Progressive Party. Those in current Taiwanese political circles aren’t qualified politicians , they’re just mediocre people who’ve taken on politics as a profession, what can they ever change? Look at that Chen Shuibian. Are you independent? Isn’t that your political ideology? Not only is [Taiwan] not independent, he’s eaten up an enormous sum of the Taiwanese people’s money!

So, Taiwan has no talented administrators; Americans selling them weapons is useless. America cannot stop the unification of Taiwan. When the unification happens will be decided by China. We don’t fear war, [but] we hope to use great sincerity to peacefully unify Taiwan. After all, the ‘brothers’ on either side [of the strait] are not strangers. If Taiwan is incited by the Americans, and ignores the feelings of the people and goes against common sense, then the weapons will have to come out.

Taiwan, don’t naively think that you can divide up the family, this family you cannot separate from!

America, don’t naively think that you can split up China, you don’t have the skill. Moreover, don’t think that the Chinese people won’t bear a grudge, the Chinese are the best in the world at bearing grudges. If you don’t fear retribution, keep making trouble, if you don’t, it would be so boring!

I think we can retaliate against America!

Netizen comments from China.com:

袖里乾坤:

看风向吧:

America has already learned the lesson: making endless concessions to China can only further intensify it, make it refuse democracy, and become enemies with the world. When weighing the balance between democracy and economy, Americans finally decided that the value of democracy was much greater than the value of the economy! Otherwise, they would have avoided FDR’s serious postwar mistake with China! Now we’ve come to the time of restoring the original spirit!

北冥教主 [in response to the above comment]:

American democracy isn’t valuable, it isn’t real democracy!

hygry:

Taiwan’s doing it as insurance, America’s doing it for money. [In Taiwan] they have permanent property ownership rights, [if they] come back it changes to seventy-year use rights, and [houses] can be torn down at any time. Consider it, what would you think?

正压邪:

In the past thirty years, China has already become a country that’s only looking for money.

一叶戏秋风:

I personally feel that America can sell as many weapons to Taiwan as it wants, all that it takes is for us to be willing and those weapons are ours. 9494 [sounds like “exactly, exactly” in Mandarin]

农村老实人:

Well said.

芦根：

America, let’s see how many years you can keep being crazy!

wlq0412:

This comment has been deleted.

hechufeixue:

Chairman Mao was a great leader, and everyone remembers him fondly, but today’s politicians? When they step down, who will remember them fondly?

Netizen comments on a news story about the arms sales on Netease:

网易四川攀枝花网友:

Everyone must rethink this, if you were Taiwanese, would you want river crabs?

网易辽宁大连网友:

We don’t need to fear America selling arms to Taiwan, as soon as a war started these advanced weapons would be quickly consumed by our lower-quality but numerous weapons and many soldiers. But I can’t bear to see my own people injured and murdered; as to Taiwan, I’m not sure if I love it or hate it.

网易广东珠海网友:

An enterprise seeking profit, what’s wrong with that?

网易浙江宁波网友:

These arms are all defensive weapons, for example right now, they’re selling Taiwan patriot [defensive missiles], not F-16 [fighter jets].

网易浙江杭州网友:

A dog says loudly, America is our hope. A pig hears and laughs. The dog doesn’t understand and asks why did you laugh. The pig says, your head must have been slammed in a door, because you sound like an ass.

网易广东深圳网友 [in response to the comment above]:

America is humanity’s hope. The guy above me isn’t even as good as a dog.

网易河北石家庄网友:

As long as America exists, the world cannot be peaceful.

网易重庆渝中网友 [in response to the comment above]:

I only know that without America, the whole world would be chaotic.

This post was translated by C. Custer, editor of the China news, translation, and analysis blog ChinaGeeks.

Make love, not war. chinaSMACK personals.

