The SARS outbreak that originated in China has resulted in disasters for Taiwan and several other countries. Meanwhile, Japan is now voicing support for Taiwan's participation in the World Health Organization (WHO) after witnessing the SARS outbreaks in China and Taiwan. Japan is calling for observership status for Taiwan to stop a potential loophole in the global epidemic control network while circumventing political problems.
Recently the Japanese government has notified China twice of its desire to support Taiwan's entry into the WHO. Beijing has expressed its opposition, but Japan's recent gestures have been a great boost for Taiwan's pursuit of the rights of its 23 million people. After the SARS epidemic is over, the WHO will inevitably have to review China's cover-up of its epidemic. At that time, the serious harm caused to Taipei will also come under the international spotlight. Asian countries which have close relations with Taiwan are likely to take a more serious look at the consequences of this nation being excluded from global epidemic control -- if only for their own self-interest -- because they could very well be the victims of this lapse.
In an attempt to stop the WHO's assistance to Taiwan, Chinese Vice Premier and Minister of Health Wu Yi (
The "attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health" has been the WHO's objective since its inception. However, Beijing's cover-up and obstructionism in the SARS crisis threw a monkey wrench into the WHO's epidemic control network. Only when the situation began to spin out of control in China and reports of SARS outbreaks emerged in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Canada and Taiwan did the global health body really began to intervene. More than 500 people have died from SARS, thousands more have been hospitalized and tens of thousands have been quarantined. The economic losses incurred by these outbreaks are difficult to estimate.
The WHO must never allow a repeat of this mistake. It must formulate a strategy to deal with the Chinese government's habitual cover-ups and to prevent damage to the security and welfare of people around the world.
The people of Taiwan long ago lost hope in Beijing's capacity for soul-searching. After the 921 earthquake three years ago, China tried to block international aid to Taiwan. When did the Chinese leadership ever care about the plight of the people of Taiwan? The WHO should understand that excluding Taiwan for political reasons can incur a huge price. Allowing the people of this country to be exposed to the threat of disease is also against the spirit of humanitarianism.
The SARS outbreak has told us clearly that China is incapable of taking care of Taiwan. On the contrary, China by its intransigence has harmed the lives of Taiwanese time and again. The WHO should help Taiwan remove this threat instead of kowtowing to Beijing and abetting in its vice.
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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