Hold your horses, please
Since the presidential election campaign began, Taiwan's visibility in international news reports has increased. Hundreds of journalists from around the world gathered here to witness the election's outcome.
Despite the post-election social and political turmoil, the political situation has cooled down in recent weeks, and so has Taiwan's profile in the international media.
The issues that the global media were most interested in covering were President Chen Shui-bian's (
Suffice it to say that A-bian (阿扁) failed to achieve his referendum agenda, yet that failure effectively clarified Taiwan's security issues for the world at large. Perhaps making this point was what he actually intended to accomplish, rather than the passage of the referendum.
A-bian has thus far elevated the level of global awareness of China's tyrannical policies, particularly of the hundreds of missiles aimed at Taiwan.
Nowadays when I talk with someone in Canada who might not even know where Taiwan is, chances are she or he knows that Taiwan has a serious problem with its neighbor China. Based on that fact alone, A-bian deserves 100 percent credit for sending out this message so effectively.
However, a more serious problem confronting Taiwan's security is not its inability to further publicize China's military threat. It is rather the post-facto clean-up resolution with the US, Taiwan's most significant ally, which also serves this nation as its weapons manufacturing powerhouse and as a cross-strait balancing element.
By clean-up resolution, I do not mean any voluntary submission by Taiwan to US-imposed policy alternatives. Instead, Taiwan should restrain itself from further provoking the Americans, and especially the Chinese tyrants.
To be more specific, the proposed 2006 Constitutional reform ought to be put into the freezer until the heat wave outside cools down. Its reintroduction, or any fundamental change in the current cross-strait status quo, will undoubtedly be interpreted as posing a serious threat to the US' national interest, as well as to China's.
Washington's fundamental interest is that Taiwan remain a semi-independent country, to be sold as many expensive weapons as possible, for as long as China maintains its missiles and other military threats against Taiwan.
As for China, as long as its dream of unification remains it can be metaphorically said to be a big baby crying for milk; once he is fed, he will quiet down.
As for Taiwan, A-bian should lead the nation quietly and discreetly toward a new position within the trilateral framework, toning down the independence rhetoric but significantly upgrading national military capabilities.
Taiwan should be the fisherman sitting idly waiting for the fish to come in, not the other way around. Let the big boys fight each other!
Lee Chia-le
Canada
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
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS