Taiwanese people know that today's China has become a haven for Taiwanese gangsters and economic criminals.
For humanitarian reasons and for the safety of air travelers, the government began in the 1990s to send Chinese hijackers seeking freedom back to China, in accordance with international regulations. This has stopped people from using such violent means to escape. However, to this day, Taiwan's efforts to improve cross-strait relations have not been reciprocated by China. On the contrary, Beijing uses Chinese criminals to repeatedly attack the nation, politically and economically.
Today, not only is Beijing not willing to let illegal Chinese immigrants be repatriated in a timely manner, but it shelters many criminals who have committed serious crimes in this country, allowing them to use China as a base and continue their vicious actions against Taiwanese businesspeople and the public. How can such a bad neighbor ever win acceptance from the Taiwanese people?
For example, fugitive Hsueh Chiu (
In terms of the cross-strait relationship, it is all but obvious that Beijing is hoping to indulge these criminals and thereby achieve its goal of destroying Taiwan's economic stability, social order and political harmony. China's use of Chen Yu-hao to launch a fierce attack on President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) during the presidential election showed the Taiwanese people that one of the main reasons that these criminals are allowed to hide in China is that China hopes that they can be used as tools with which to attack and vilify Taiwan's leaders.
On the international stage, China has not only sought to prevent Taiwan from gaining observer status in the World Health Organization, but more recently it also sought to obstruct the nation's participation in the International Symposium on Economic Crime hosted by Cambridge University. It was only because the organizers refused to bow to pressure from the Chinese embassy in the UK that Beijing did not achieve its goal. But is there any need for such seminars, which aim to achieve peace, health, safety and happiness for people around the world, to be drawn into such a political whirlpool? China's rulers obviously think so, and they have even sought to drum up blame and criticism over Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's (
Taiwan, with its democracy, freedom and rule of law, stands in stark contrast to the tyrannical ways of China. This is something that all the world can see. Moreover, Taiwanese can now see the ulterior motives behind Beijing's willingness to provide a haven for Taiwan's felons.
This kind of despicable behavior only reveals the true face of the Chinese Communist Party's power. It shows that China's leaders are no better than a pack of thieves and assures that Taiwanese with ideals and aspirations will want nothing to do with them.
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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