At first we were tempted to write off those standing against the government's representatives in the referendum debates as the shameless has-beens and opportunists that most of them are. But then we should probably be glad someone is going to do this. After all, the pan-blue camp never tells the truth about its opposition to the referendum, namely that it is motivated by deference to Beijing's wishes. Rather it seeks to portray the referendum as illegal, which it quite obviously is not, or else the pan-blues would have mounted a legal challenge to it already; or simply pointless, asking questions about which there could be no disagreement. It's true that the questions are a little bland, though the fault for that lies with Washington, where the questions were all but drafted, rather than the government here. But if the pan-blue criticism of the seriousness of the questions is to be refuted, the best way to achieve that is to see a lively debate about them.
It is hard to predict what the antis are going to say in the debate, especially given that we have no final list of who they will be. But last Wednesday one would-be debater, Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) of the Chinese Speech and Debate Association, drew attention to the fact that there were a number of different positions that could be taken apart from either not voting at all or voting yes. Good, though we disagree with the positions that Lo himself has taken.
The two questions are, as you are probably weary of hearing, whether Taiwan should increase spending on anti-missile defense and whether Taiwan should open some kind of negotiations with China.
Actually there are respectable "anti" positions on these questions, takers of which should run no risk of being labelled a stooge of China -- the common fear of the antis.
For example, do the kind of anti-missile defenses that Taiwan might buy actually work? The only really mature system is the Patriot PAC-3 and it has yet to be shown that this is effective. Remember how the first Patriots were praised during Gulf War I by the US Department of Defense, only for us to find out later on that they were utterly useless and probably never downed a single missile?
Then again, there is an old military maxim that the best means of defense is offence. We have seen a number of senior officers, both serving and retired, question Taiwan's devotion to missile defense against China's missiles, when a far more effective deterrent might be to create missiles of our own. Those who deplore any resulting arms race should take note that China can only threaten Taiwan because it runs no risk of retaliation. Up the risk factor to China and you might even bring it to the negotiating table.
Which brings us to the second question. Should Taiwan talk to China? What for? Because its businessmen have invested there? This has been going on for 15 years without discussions and it doesn't seem to have been a handicap, looking at the investment figures. Obviously there is nothing wrong with Taiwan and China sitting down together if each is prepared to respect the other and negotiate in good faith. Experience suggest that this is impossible with the communists. They will not respect Taiwan. Why Taiwan should offer goodwill in order to be ritually humiliated is a question that the "yes" voters should try to answer. What does that Taiwanese ultranationalist Lee Teng-hui (
So there are arguments against and it would be a good thing for the referendum process to hear them. But whatever the result of the referendum, as we said last week, the most important thing is to have it. It is, as we said before but cannot say too often, the turnout alone that matters.
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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