As expected, Taiwan's participation in the Olympic Games in Athens has become the target of various crude attempts at oppression by the Chinese government. Even though the Olympic flame, which represents the Olympic Spirit, has not yet returned to Athens and there is still a week to go before the official opening of the games, the Chinese government is already displaying its overbearing political arrogance in an attempt to make the name "Taiwan" less visible, or even disappear completely.
Vice President Annette Lu (
Premier Yu Shyi-kun also advised the public to raise their psychological defenses. He lamented incidences like A-mei's (
In the run-up to the departure of the nation's Olympic team, the government has sought to use announcements and advertisements posted around Athens to increase awareness of Taiwan within the international community at this global sports event. However, the Beijing authorities were quick to put pressure on a preparatory committee for the Athens Olympics, asking them to remove everything that Taiwan had posted.
In the case of A-Mei, her songs are popular on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and they encourage ties of friendship within the Chinese-speaking community. She is also a source of pride for Taiwan and Beijing becomes incensed with, and wants to destroy anything that Taiwanese can take pride in. Now that the athletes representing Taiwan are preparing to set off for the games, they take with them the hopes and support of 23 million Taiwanese. The nation has high hopes for the baseball team in particular, which has provided a real morale boost for our society. Rest assured, however, that Beijing will employ every means at its disposal to put pressure on the Taiwanese team over the course of the Athens games.
The relationship between the two sides of the Strait has developed as a result of complex historical and geopolitical factors. The conflicts between politicians on both sides shift according to these objective factors and subjective perceptions. But the lives of ordinary people are constantly being disrupted by politics to the extent that they have become the victims of the political process. Ordinary people on both sides of the Strait now follow the examples of politicians in constraining each other's actions. The result of this is that the Strait will become a gulf that cuts one society off from the other.
The joy of an athlete's victory and sharing the emotions of their countrymen -- whether in success or failure -- is one of the best ways of developing a national community. Beijing consciously rejects the humanism embodied in this idea, and insists on barbarically oppressing Taiwan's attempts to rise up.
Taiwan does not need to resort to mobilizing politicians or initiate struggles between political parties to resolve this situation. The government simply needs to encourage excellence and competitiveness in a number of high-profile sports. As our athletes compete with their international peers and excel, the contrast between China's political oppression and the light of Taiwan's humanism will be seen the international stage.
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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