Nobody could accuse PFP Legislator Kao Ming-chien (
Taiwan has, of course, been struggling to participate in this conference organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and little wonder, given that the nation is the third hardest-hit by the virus. All along China has put obstacles in Taiwan's way which might well have cost Taiwanese lives.
China's own behavior as the originator of the SARS virus, which it tried so hard to cover up, has earned it international opprobrium. But its behavior toward Taiwan should cause an international outcry. It has, at the same time, both blocked Taiwan's access to WHO aid and expertise, while claiming that, as the legitimate sovereign of Taiwan -- a claim it bases on the craven acceptance by most of the world's governments of its "one China" blackmail -- it has the responsibility for looking after Taiwan's health, and has discharged this responsibility well.
Kao has played a key part in Beijing's attempt to sustain this absurdity, holding two video conferences with Chinese SARS experts last month, so that his real constituency -- namely Zhongnanhai -- can use these events to back up its outrageous claims. Now this Chinese agent, who sits as a representative of the Taiwanese people but, as an at-large legislator, has not actually had a single vote cast for him in Taiwan, is busy again in Kuala Lumpur trying to belittle this country and weaken its international position.
Center for Disease Control Director-General Su Ih-jen (
We cannot but help feel that with SARS under control here, the WHO needs Taiwan now far more than Taiwan needs the WHO. In the early days of the outbreak, when pooled expertise was important, the global body did everything it could not to provide this information to Taipei for purely political reasons. Now the WHO wants to show that it is on top of SARS, it is the WHO's need for information that is greater than Taiwan's need for help. If it needs this information it should, as our mothers told it, have to ask nicely. Why should Taiwan give its knowledge away to a body that won't even address it by name.
In this light it is about time that people who care about this country's stature -- which, of course excludes the pan-blue camp and about 80 percent of the media -- stopped indulging the government in its spinelessness, stopped suggesting that any nod from exclusive clubs of "sovereign nations" to the Taiwanese begger at their door was worth having. It would have been better for Taiwan not to send an official delegation at all. That would have made Kao's status as an agent of China all the more obvious. As for what to do with Kao himself, let Taiwanese patriots take off the kid gloves and show that Beijing dupes like him are no longer welcome in the legislature or, in fact, in this nation.
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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