Taiwan's 12th bid for UN membership was rejected by a vote of 94 to 21 at the 59th UN General Assembly session yesterday, once again failing to make it onto the assembly's agenda. Although the nation still remains outside the world body, its new strategies and tactics were a breakthrough compared with those of the past, and they deserve our praise.
The national title used was an obvious change. In the joint proposal by our 15 diplomatic allies -- entitled "The Question of the Representation of the 23 Million People of Taiwan in the United Nations" -- the nation is called the "Republic of China (Taiwan)" in the first paragraph, but is referred to as "Taiwan" in the rest of the text.
When the nation launched its first UN bid some 12 years ago, the name used was the "Republic of China." In the past few years, this was amended to the "Republic of China on Taiwan." But the change this year, to the "Republic of China (Taiwan)" only in the first paragraph, shows the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has adjusted Taiwan's national title in accordance with the political situation at home and abroad.
President Chen Shui-bian (
Breaking with past practice, Chen this year directly attacked UN Resolution 2758, which recognized the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the representative of the people of China. Chen promoted a legal separation of Taiwan and China, saying that "Taiwan is Taiwan, and Taiwan neither can nor will compete for China's right to representation."
The president stressed that Resolution 2758 has been misused to block Taiwan from UN participation, depriving Taiwan's 23 million people of their basic human right to participate in UN activities. He said this not only violates the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights principles, it also mocks the UN's principle of universality for membership.
Noting that both East and West Germany had enjoyed UN membership and that this had not prevented their eventual unification, and that North and South Korea's separate seats in the UN do not stop them from pursuing unification, Chen asked that the international community allow both sides of the Taiwan Strait to be UN members, thus making the UN a platform for cross-strait negotiations.
The Government Information Office also engaged in an international ad campaign publishing ads entitled "UNFAIR," bringing the issue directly to the international community and highlighting the unfairness of the UN's political isolation of Taiwan and its people. Chen also broke the back of China's incessant suppression of Taiwan by his unprecedented conference with international media during which he emphasized Taiwan's appeal to join the UN. These events show that the government's tactics are becoming more layered and flexible.
In a US presidential election year, no one wants to see any major changes, so it is not surprising to once again see Taiwan's bid to enter the UN end in failure. Despite this, the increased visibility and discussion of Taiwan's UN membership in the General Assembly, and recognition regarding the misuse of Resolution 2758 is heartening; it marks a significant step forward on Taiwan's road to UN membership.
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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