Yesterday was the 54th National Day of the PRC. So far, media reports have shown no prominent Taiwanese businesspeople showing up at the celebrations, but there is no knowing whether they attended the events but kept a low profile or whether Chinese officialdom barred the media from reporting on the activities of any Taiwanese delegations.
In previous years pan-blue politicians and businesspeople went to China for the Oct. 1 festivities in droves, as if they were attending a temple fair for Matsu (
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) last week banned its politicians from attending Beijing's celebrations because it feared providing more ammunition for President Chen Shui-bian (
Given the joint KMT-People First Party (PFP) presidential ticket and the spiritual alliance between those parties and the remnants of the New Party, all pan-blue politicians will naturally cooperate with the KMT's election strategy. Apparently no pan-blue politician will show up at a high-profile event on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
This travel restriction stands in sharp contrast to the behavior of pan-blue politicians when there isn't an upcoming election -- then they are joining tour groups to China and visiting Chinese officials at the drop of a hat.
Political commentators have often noted that in the three years since the KMT lost power, many of the politicians who in the past had attended the Republic of China's (ROC) National Day celebrations in Taipei showed up in Beijing for the PRC's National Day celebrations instead. Ironically, it is Chen and the DPP that have held on to the empty shell of the ROC. Since 2000, come Double Ten Day, KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
What's was even more ludicrous was that Ma prohibited the organizers of an international women's soccer tournament from flying the ROC flag during the games on grounds that the International Olympic Committee would not approve. Outraged pan-green camp supporters delighted in bringing small ROC flags in the games and waving them.
Now comes election time and the pan-blue camp are once again talking loudly about the ROC, while criticizing former president Lee Teng-hui (
Nevertheless, the KMT's travel ban indicates the party is well aware of China's unpopularity among the people of Taiwan -- if not outright loathing for the Beijing government. The KMT has been cozying up to Beijing for several years in the hope of using China's influence to shackle the DPP government and increase its own influence. Its willingness to cavort and conspire with Beijing shows how little it cares about Taiwan. All it cares about is regaining power and enriching its members.
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