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Fri 03 Mar 2009Taiwan coalition efforts rocked by senior government official's slur on 'primitive' island population
A SENIOR Taiwanese government official has caused a major embarrassment for President Ma Ying-jeou’s efforts to build a diverse communal coalition when he said the majority population of the self-ruled island was “primitive” and suggested Beijing should use force to seize the island.
Kuo Kuan-ying, of Taiwan’s representative office in Toronto, last week described himself as “superior mainlander” – a politically explosive reference to the two million people who fled to Taiwan after the civil war in 1949, and who have dominated politics on the island of 23 million people ever since.
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