According to the US Department of Defense's annual report to Congress on China's military power, there has been talk in Taiwan about attacking high-value targets in China, such as the Three Gorges Dam, if the nation comes under attack from China. Immediately, some media outlets began to portray this as a suggestion by the US that Taiwan attack, or interpreted it to mean that the nation is actually planning such an attack.
This is of course all very irresponsible and the whole story could not be further from the truth. This is not to mention that the story has created unnecessary anxiety in Taiwan.
It is imperative to point out that Taiwan could not possibly make a first strike against China in any event. If it did, it would lose all international support, in particular that of the US, which is the lifeline onto which it has been hanging in the face of increasing Chinese threats. Even talk of enhancing Taiwan's sovereignty or adopting a new constitution has triggered pressure from the US, which has repeatedly emphasized that the US is obligated under the Taiwan Relations Act only to help Taiwan in its self-defense, not in other situations; so it is not hard to imagine what would happen if Taiwan made a first strike. Under the circumstances, it is completely erroneous to depict Taiwan as planning such an attack or the US as suggesting such a thing.
But it is an entirely different matter to think about what could be done in self-defense if China attacked. Attacking the Three Gorges Dam is merely one among many options that might be discussed against such a backdrop. There is really no need to highlight such a scenario -- doing so would only create a hawkish image of Taiwan, when in reality China is the biggest threat to peace in the Taiwan Strait and in fact the entire Asia-Pacific region.
When pressed by legislators on Wednesday about the nation's ability to attack the Three Gorges Dam, Vice Minister of National Defense Tsai Ming-hsien (
Though Tsai was telling the truth, the strange thing is that such comments probably created anxiety instead of comfort among the public. This reflects the mindset of the people of Taiwan: They do not want any talk of military hostility between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Many people can't seem to face the genuine nature of the cross-strait relationship -- that is, that China is a very hostile country waiting eagerly to take over the nation. While the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have been engaging in close economic, social and cultural exchanges, the Chinese government has never altered its hostile attitude.
Tsai also indicated in the Legislative Yuan that China may very well launch a small-scale attack as early as 2006 or 2008. He was of course condemned for encouraging hysteria and paranoia. The truth of the matter is that while giving a precise timetable about an attack is probably unwise, the possibility of an attack is real. The topic is now taboo precisely because the possibility is so real.
The day that the people of Taiwan finally face the truth and adjust their mentality may be the day that the current "national identity" crisis becomes a thing of the past.
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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