Although President Chen Shui-bian's (
Yesterday, Zhang Mingqing (
China actually obtained a copy of the speech via the US and rushed to announce its position prior to Chen's inauguration. China's two reactions in a week indicate it is gravely concerned with the international response to the speech.
Chen had set goals: to calm the electorate at home, to relieve the anxious US and the international community, and to deprive China of any excuse to use force against Taiwan.
Some people in Taiwan criticized Chen for con-ceding too much regarding the cross-strait relationship in his speech, as he promised that changes to the Constitution would not touch on issues of the country's national flag, title or sovereignty. He also approached the topic of constitutional reform in terms of "re-engineering" rather than as writing a new Constitution. Despite this complaint, the speech was well-received by the public.
Chen's inauguration speech was better received by the international community. It was acclaimed as "responsible and constructive" by the US State Department and viewed positively by other governments. Compared with the international response to Chen's speech, Beijing's comment appears jarring. Its failure to influence international opinion forced it to make another statement.
Yet as the US said on May 17, China's military threat is unnecessary. What Zhang said over the weekend was a mere reiteration of intimidation, which was neither positive nor constructive for cross-strait dialogue. China's decision to make the second statement was simply another mistake.
As Taiwan offers the olive branch of peace and China rattles its saber, the international community can easily tell which side shows flexibility and aspirations for peace, and which side is the troublemaker and source of cross-strait tension. Although power and influence define a country's role in the global arena, the capacity to differentiate right and wrong cannot be ignored. It is easy to tell who is right and who is wrong in the cross-strait relationship from the statements of all sides.
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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