The World Health Organization (WHO) is convening its annual World Health Assembly (WHA) later this month in Geneva. So President Chen Shui-bian (
Because this platform does not involve the conflict over Taiwan's national sovereignty, and because Chen's re-election has established Taiwan as a model for democracy in Asia, the international community should accord Taiwan just and fair treatment on this issue. The international community cannot continue to bow to China's unreasonable pressure and keep isolating Taiwan and its people.
Despite support from the US and Japan, Taiwan's attempts to win WHO membership were pre-empted for the seventh time at the WHA meeting last June.
Few have forgotten how China's representative to the UN in Geneva, Sha Zukang (
Last year, the Chinese dictators concealed the SARS outbreak and created a global epidemic that caused great economic and social harm in many countries, and particularly in Taiwan.
As the SARS epidemic hit Taiwan and created a need for international assistance, Beijing claimed SARS was a domestic issue and kept the WHO and other international medical organizations from helping Taiwan. China's Vice Premier Wu Yi (
When Taiwan's lonely fight against SARS was won and it was willing to share its experiences and medical resources with other countries, Beijing applied further pressure to keep Taiwan's health officials and organizations from participating in international medical meetings. China relied on its satellite states to block Taiwan's accession to the WHO.
This treachery showed Taiwan's people the Chinese leadership's true colors. But it also lent legitimacy to Chen's decision to hold the nation's first-ever referen-dum, and it helped the Democratic Progressive Party find a major theme for its presidential election campaign -- holding hands to protect Taiwan and to defy China's threats.
China cannot have expected that its suppression of Taiwan's attempts to gain WHO entry would mark the beginning of a new Taiwanese consciousness.
Almost a year later, Sha's poisonous question continues to have unintended positive effects. Chen and Taiwanese consciousness won the presidential election with a majority of the vote.
During the campaign, even China-friendly politicians from the anti-independence Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party were forced to criticize China and use strong language to warn Beijing against further offending Taiwan's people.
Further from home, EU countries now follow the US and Japan in expressing their support for Taiwan's democratic achievements. These allies are willing to help Taiwan participate in the international community on normalized and equal terms.
Will the Chinese government finally wake up and accept Taiwanese mainstream opinion? Beijing often claims to pin its hopes on Taiwan's people.
The WHA offers China a great opportunity to turn savagery into benevolence and political considerations into human concern. We hope that Beijing's new generation of leaders will see that continuing its past tough approach will only further alienate the Taiwanese people.
A humane and sensible approach would reflect the demeanor of a great power. But if China persists in its old bullying attitudes, Taiwan's year-end legislative elections will result in yet another slap to Beijing's face.
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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