(Map from CNN)

I'd put something in my post below on this but somehow it disappeared ...

So I was looking at this map that goes along with the Failed States Index provided by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace and there is Madagascar blacked out (no data it seems) and Iceland is the same way, and places like the Canary Islands and the Azores and all those Pacific Islands and much the the caribbean islands are absent, all those last ones which make sense for obvious reasons. And then I see the island of Hainan off of China, right there next to Vietnam. No big deal really, but up to the north, between Japan and the Phillipines, there's not the blacked out island you would expect to see (or perhaps even colored in, which would likely be grey or light yellow): Taiwan.

So where did Taiwan go? Why not just put Taiwan up there as blacked out, or possibly even colored in (it would be interesting to know its rating against the golem across the straight, especially since China dropped ten points from last year.

Anyway, I'm getting a bit tired of Taiwan not getting its fair props, even if this was not intentional. Especially in light of all the kowtowing to China since it is such a huge market, and especially in light of it being named to the human rights council of the U.N. (along with a few other bad seeds) when it has an atrocious human rights record, not to mention its terrible press freedom record. Instead of being ignored, Taiwan should be celebrated and held up as something for mainland China to emulate instead of to scorn.