The pan-blues' latest strategy for trying to avoid embarrassing questions about their relationship with China has apparently been acquired from the Shaggy album Hotshot, in particular the strategy outlined by Shaggy in It wasn't me to solve the problem of his friend RikRok.
RikRok's difficulty is succinctly laid out in the chorus: "Honey came in and she caught me red-handed, creeping with the girl next door/Picture this we were both butt-naked banging on the bathroom floor/How could I forget that I had given her an extra key?"
Shaggy's advice to his friend is simply to deny everything, say "it wasn't me." RikRok finds this strategy unconvincing given the long list of places where his girlfriend has witnessed his antics -- "she even caught me on camera." Shaggy insists; tell her anything you like but don't admit to what was so embarrassingly obvious; "convince her, say you're gay/Never admit to a word when she say."
This is exactly the strategy the pan-blues have adopted when faced with allegations considering their now widely known conspiracy with China. The allegations were raised again by President Chen Shui-bian (
Since then the pan-blue camp has followed a legislative agenda that seems to be almost drawn up by China. Recently the KMT had to ban its legislators from going to China to celebrate the PRC's national day on Oct. 1. A number of pan-blue legislators had been invited for what the invites called "contributions to the interests of China." The pan-blues realize that getting into bed with China is not a vote winner in Taiwanese elections. They also have discovered that even with their lockhold on the majority of Taiwan's media, their extensive interactions across the Taiwan Strait cannot be suppressed for ever. So as well as requiring their camp followers to be more cautious, they are also hoping that outright denial is going to work: "It wasn't us."
People First Party Chairman James Soong (
How Chen looks down on the people by telling The Post the truth, we do not know. Soong has shown his contempt for the Taiwanese a number of times -- such as in his suppression of Taiwanese-language broadcasting when he was head of the Government Information Office, in the lies he told to cover up KMT murders in the 1980s and in his engineering of Elmer Feng's (
Even in the last presidential election campaign we had a wonderful example of this contempt as Soong tried to explain away the Chung Hsing Bills Finance scandal and the accusation that he had robbed his own party with a story that changed every day and which a three-year-old could see through. It's obvious here who is "insulting the people of Taiwan."
Soong insults our intelligence and sense of morality every time he stands up to speak.
Soong did make one useful suggestion however. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should go public with what is known about the pan-blues and China. DPP Legislator Trong Chai's (
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not