Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan's (
Lien's political gamble that started with such scenes of violence demonstrated the domestic political crisis is much greater than the cross-strait crisis. Lien's real aim is to win China's support for his struggle against President Chen Shui-bian (
Before the people of Taiwan reach a consensus on the China issue, any political move that attempts to make peace or unite with Beijing will only deepen disagreement and hatred in society. For example, when Lien and his delegation received red-carpet treatment in Nanjing on Tuesday, perhaps they were proud and self-satisfied, but people with strong Taiwan consciousness felt humiliated as they watched Lien's smirking on TV, and could only have felt deeply hurt. After all, China has only recently passed an "Anti-Secession" Law, which legitimizes the use of military force against this country.
This is the source of Tuesday's violence -- the fact that satisfying Lien's vanity comes at the cost of the humiliation of the Taiwanese people. This humiliation will only deepen feelings of hatred and will certainly never facilitate cross-strait peace.
A greater cause for anxiety is that Lien is using this trip to insinuate Beijing further into Taiwan's domestic disputes. In the past, come election time, China could only use military and verbal threats to support the pan-blue camp from the sidelines. But China's recent proposal to purchase Taiwan's agricultural produce -- made during KMT Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kun's (
There are mutual benefits to be had for both China and the KMT from these visits. Beijing is clearly willing to throw its money around. If it can buy enough votes, it can help the KMT return to power, where, as a Beijing puppet, it will smooth the way to "peaceful unification." This is an attempt at electoral fraud on an international scale, and the government should bring this situation before the court of international opinion.
Lien should remember that in 1995, then Chinese president Jiang Zemin's (
Since that time, China has not softened its position, and has just passed a law legitimizing the use of force against Taiwan. So why has Lien been in such a hurry to suck up to China, since the KMT is not in power? The answer is clear -- his overweening ambition. Does the dignity of this nation have to be sacrificed to assuage Lien's long history of electoral failure?
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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