On Friday May 23 the UN barred Andrew Hsia(
Eleventh-hour strong-arm tactics by China pressured UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Beijing spearheaded this incident as part of its ongoing campaign against international recognition of Taiwan as an independent sovereign nation.
Thus far, much of the criticism of China and the UN has focused on the issues of Taiwan's freedom of access to the UN and the freedom of the UNCA to invite whomever it wishes.
Equally as important, given that much of the briefing would have concerned the SARS situation in Taiwan, the UN should have been much more supportive of the scheduled event, which it had previously approved.
Given that the SARS epidemic originated in China, Beijing should be much more sensitive. It is one thing to oppose Taiwan's bid for member ship in the WHA. It is quite another matter to interfere with efforts to communicate about SARS.
Both China and the UN shirked their responsibilities to the global community, China by pressuring the UN, the UN by yielding to the pressure. Both the UN and the Chinese government should be ashamed of such behavior. Both owe Taiwan and the international community at large a public apology.
China's actions exhibit a bitter immaturity that should not be tolerated by the UN or by the international community at large. It is bad enough that the lack of transparency on the part of the Chinese government contributed to the global spread of the SARS virus. It is inexcusable to follow up such questionable behavior with actions that interfere with attempts to communicate progress and ongoing conditions related to the SARS epidemic.
China's government should not have been surprised when Taiwan rejected its offer to send personnel and supplies to help Taiwan battle SARS. The action appears to be a case of "too little too late," and far short of the apology that the international community and the people of Taiwan deserve.
George Thompson is an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages at Kai Nan University in Taoyuan.
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