Taiwan's health authorities have worked hard to prevent the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), but unfortunately the country lost its "zero community-acquired infection, zero death, zero export" record after a mass infection occurred at the Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital.
The nation's fight against SARS has now entered a new phase, as the previous approach of simply screening individuals entering the country is no longer effective. President Chen Shui-bian (
Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital was shut down after a mass infection was detected among medical personnel. All the patients and medical personnel at the hospital have been quarantined. Venues suspected of having been visited by possible SARS carriers are being sterilized. People suspected of having come into contact with SARS patients are being put under home quarantine. Such measures, coming without warning, have caught many people off guard. Some medical personnel at the hospital are finding these actions unacceptable. They have staged protests by putting up placards on the hospital's windows.
The unhappiness of those quarantined is understandable and we must thank them for the sacrifice they are making for the public's welfare. By having their freedom of movement temporarily curbed, they are making it possible to limit the SARS infection within specific areas. Confining both healthy people and suspected SARS patients in the same building may increase the possibility of healthy people being infected, but the risk is one thatmust be taken for the greater good.
In China, where SARS originated, the authorities lost the best opportunity to prevent the outbreak when they covered up the situation and rejected the World Health Organization's offers to help. Now SARS has become a public-health crisis in many countries. In March, we suggested that any contact with China be curtailed, in an effort to crank up international pressure to force China to face the outbreak. Now we make the same suggestion again, this time for self-protection.
Twelve countries have given travel warnings about Taiwan as a SARS-affected area. The SARS situation in China is a thousand times more serious than it is here. It is imperative and understandable for the government to adopt quarantine measures against China.
On Thursday, the Mainland Affairs Council announced control measures on travel across the Taiwan Strait based on the principle of "minimal control." This is the beginning of cross-strait quarantine measures. In light of the rapidly deteriorating situation in China and Hong Kong, "minimal control" measures are not enough. The government must adopt tougher controls and make it a rule to stop personal travel from China, allowing passage in exceptional cases only. It must do this to effectively implement all necessary preventive measures inside this country. If we do not nip SARS in the bud, all preventive measures may be futile.
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,
RSS