Chinese President Jiang Zemin (
It is highly inappropriate for Jiang to even suggest an exchange. It erroneously implies that the US and Taiwan are also culpable for the cross-strait arms race and the threat to peace. But there would be no need for the US to sell defensive arms to Taiwan without Chinese aggression. China is the one that must undo what it started by removing the missiles with no strings attached. Once that is done Taiwan will put its money to other ends.
The exchange also places Chinese missiles and arm sales to Taiwan on a comparable level when the two are completely at odds. Missiles are offensive weapons while the arms being sold to Taiwan are defensive weapons. Taiwan can purchase all the defensive arms in the world yet it will still represent no threat, but the missiles deployed by China are probably sufficient to send Taiwan to the bottom of the Strait.
Moreover, a mere freeze or even a removal of the missiles hardly seems enough. The real threat to Taiwan is China's repeated declarations that it reserves the right to use force to take over the country. What Taiwan really needs from China is a promise to renounce the use of force and to resolve cross-strait differences peacefully. Until that is done, Taiwan is not safe. Unfortunately, during the recent 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Jiang Zemin talked of using force "only" against pro-independent activists and foreign forces that intend to prevent unification.
Even if one takes Jiang's words at face value there are still many practical issues that must be resolved first. An impartial verification mechanism to check whether China is carrying out its end of the bargain would be needed. Will China agree to inspections by the UN, the US or some other third party? If Jiang is sincere he should offer specific details.
More than likely the gesture by Jiang is no more than a diplomatic and propaganda stunt. For years the US has consistently taken the offensive in raising concerns about missile threats and China has uniformly responded by claiming that it has every right to deploy missiles in its own territory free of foreign interference. This time around, Jiang probably decided to turn the tables on the US. It seems as if he has succeeded, for Bush was reportedly caught off guard by the proposition.
The proposal at least suggests that China is feeling pressured by the international condemnations against its missile deployment and was forced to tactfully shift some of the blame onto the US. China may very well have taken its first step toward civilization, since it is apparently at last beginning to care what others think.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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