nauru, a pacific island country, agreed to establish a diplomatic relationship with taiwan in 1980, in exchange, taiwan provided an annual aids worth of 3 million usd, in addition, taiwan offered free buildings for nauru "embassy" in taiwan, free education to kids of nauru high-ranking officials, free assistance to improve nauru's infrastructure ...
it seems all these are not enough, and nauru asked for more financial assistance and aid from taiwan. without be satisfied, nauru turned to mainland china and established a diplomatic relationship with beijing ...
now it's mainland's turn to feed nauru government's good stomach, according to the report, nauru government don't have money to pay their staff. quite understandable, nauru government was not satisfied again, and it turned to taiwan again ...
and taiwan poured more money into nauru again, again and again ...
so what US/rumsfeld can learn from Nauru?
recently rumsfeld and his gang of pentagang talked toughly on chinese military buildup (with a lot of echos on the web), and they also talked toughly on taiwan, complaining taiwan is losing the last chance to buy US weaponary worth of billions usd to balance the chinese military buildup.
rumsfeld and his gang of pentagang's strategy doesn't work quite well, the bill of buying US weaponary still has a lot of resistance in taiwan.
actually there is a better (meaner) way to get taiwan hooked, rumsfeld and his gang of pentagang could learn from nauru (diplomacy with nauru characteristics) - to tell taiwan that gang of pentagang is going to selll these weaponary to chinese people anyway, no matter which side they are, if taiwan refuses to buy them, gang of pentagang will sell them to the mainland.
i am pretty sure "nauru strategy" will work much better than rumsfeld's "chinese threat strategy".
GW should invite nauru president to work as the defense secretary of the US.