Government is for the people
On Monday night I visited Lin I-hsiung (
I was amazed as I looked on. Lin and seven others were sitting still and silent. And I could feel the weight of their cause. Although cars were passing by, it felt silent and intensely earnest. Some of you might ask, why fast? I think that it sends a message loud and clear that this matter is not trivial.
Elected officials have to understand that the government is for the people. It does not exist to give them a thrill of power or to fill their bank accounts with cash. They must be accountable to the people who elected them.
I hope all Taiwanese will refuse to vote for anyone who remains in the old KMT way of thinking. I hope they remove from office all those who have shown themselves to be false. And if you want to see a contrast, please go out and visit Lin and others on the sidewalk fasting in front of the Legislative Yuan.
Joel Linton
Taipei
(Editor's note: Joel Linton is Lin I-hsiung's son-in-law.)
Taiwanese identity not new
It has been repeated recently by the Western media that "a sense of a separate Taiwanese identity has emerged" ("Taiwanese identity in the spotlight," Mar. 2, page 4). The Western media may be discovering the existence of a Taiwanese identity now, but it is not one that has recently emerged, just as the Americas existed before Columbus laid eyes on them.
Almost all Western news media are either ignorant of or simply forget about the history of the Taiwanese identity: We used to be many groups of people (Aborigines and pioneer immigrants alike) co-existing on a Pacific island without a sense of "us"; then, for the first time, in 1895, we came together under the banner of "Taiwan Republic" (the first call for a republic in Asia) to deal with a sudden collective-existence issue. In the 50 years that followed, we further fought for our collective rights under Japanese rule.
The Taiwanese identity was born and grew between 1895 and 1945. Social, cultural, philosophical and political debates among us were much more active and livelier then than between 1945 and 1990. For instance, the first "[Taiwanese] homeland literature debate" occurred between 1930 and 1933, resulting in the sense shared among the intelligentsia that "One lives under the Taiwanese heaven and stands on the Taiwanese soil, one cannot realistically write about anything other than the people of Taiwan and their life."
The "emergence" of the Taiwanese identity that the Western media are witnessing now is really a "re-emergence," a coming out of the closet after hiding for many years under the Chiang family's terror.
We would give the thumps-up to the first Western media outlet that stops the practice of regularly regurgitating in their reports about Taiwan the mantra that "Taiwan split from China at the end of a civil war in 1949."
We existed before 1949; as ourselves, Taiwanese.
Sing Young
Taoyuan City
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
RSS