On the McDonald's Corporation's Web site, both Taiwan and Hong Kong are identified as a country, while China is missing. Many other corporations -- including Audi, Mercedes-Benz, GM and Siemens -- list Taiwan as a country. This is just a simple situation that tallies with business operations. But Chinese media believe that Taiwan cannot be taken as a "country," since this word refers to an independent nation with its own sovereignty.
With Chinese nationalism, it's hard to know whether to laugh or despair. For example, consumers worldwide are familiar with products labeled "Made in Taiwan" (MIT). MIT products represent good quality and cheap prices, especially IT products. However, if labeled "Made in China," the quality they represent may be much lower.
It's a given that Taiwan, Hong Kong and China are all official members of the WTO. In the situation in today's global market, China's actions against Taiwan's sovereignty go against most people's understanding, because they are unnecessary and appalling.
Not only has China's rigid and inflexible policy oppressed Taiwan, but it has also squeezed Hong Kong. After its handover in 1997, the territory's political independence it used to enjoy under the British disappeared, and its control over its own economic and trade affairs shrank. This has destroyed the Hong Kong people's confidence in Beijing's policy of "one country, two systems."
No wonder, despite numerous disagreements, the ruling and opposition camps in Taiwan are united in their rejection of "one country, two systems." As far as politics is concerned, the world cannot differentiate between the Republic of China (ROC) and the People's Republic of China (PRC). When it comes to China and Taiwan, it is acknowledged that these are countries ruled by two different governments. On Wednesday, 47 Democratic Party members of the Japanese Diet convened a conference to voice support for Taiwan's democratization and liberalization. They agreed to facilitate a visit to Japan by former president Lee Teng-hui (
President Chen Shui-bian (
If the two sides of the Taiwan Strait wish to maintain peace and stability, they should delineate the boundaries of the battlefield but not engage in total war. Clearly separating politics and economics and allowing mutual exchanges in the private sector to remain untrammeled by the issue of sovereignty is probably the most surefire model. If everything gets tied up in a Web of nationalism, then neither side of the strait will be able to act.
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,