So perhaps the pan-blues are to get their way after all. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is, we are told, considering whether an independent commission should be established to investigate his shooting on March 19. Apart from the dubious constitutional position of such a commission -- criminal investigations are entirely a matter for the Judicial Yuan -- it is hard to find fault with the idea. A harsh investigatory light is perhaps the only thing that will get rid of the pan-blues' shadowy claims and refocus attention on the most likely explanation for the shooting: a lone gunman prompted by the pan-blue's obscene election campaign.
If we're in the business of creating special commissions, however, let us not forget that there are a number of other crimes that cry out for high-profile treatment. Saturday saw the 23rd anniversary of the murder of Professor Chen Wen-cheng (
And why stop there? Because it is not just a case of the Martial Law regime getting a little heavy-handed. The Martial Law regime was itself illegal. The KMT regime was not, after all, the sovereign government of Taiwan, but a regime of occupation tasked with the temporary administration of Taiwan. International law is quite strict on what occupiers may not do with regard to changing the society and institutions of the lands they occupy. In this light almost everything the KMT did from 1945 was illegal. What is needed is an investigatory commission into the criminality of the KMT regime itself.
At the seminar on Friday it was pointed out that Taiwan had given priority to providing compensation for the injustices of the past but that money was often not what the victims' families actually wanted. Nor did cash bring the closure that they sought. Taiwan's approach has been both open-handed and mealy-mouthed. While compensating for injustices it has avoided addressing the issue of by whom or for what reason those injustices were performed. As such, justice itself has been ill-served.
This is not an abstract issue. It means the murderers and the torturers of the Martial Law era walk among us with impunity. Should they? Those who gave them their orders still play a major role in Taiwan's political life. Should they?
One of the things we have learned from various attempts at truth commissions and the like in the last decade or so is that emerging democracies are stronger for having had them, stronger for facing up to their past. Only when the dark deeds of the past are scrutinized properly will people understand what was so bad about it all and why we don't want to return there.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
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