Yesterday the Supreme Court threw out the opposition's case claiming that the March 20 presidential election last year should be deemed invalid because of manipulation of the election by the Democratic Progressive Party, on the basis of there being no evidence to suggest that such manipulation had taken place.
The verdict itself hardly came as a surprise for anyone who paid attention to the original court case and the pan-blue's almost comical attempt to make a case out of nothing more than Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan's (
It does not, however, necessarily seem like a better one. Much as people might have worried about the ethnic hostilities whipped up by the pan-blues both in the election and in their attempts to overturn it -- which can be swiftly summarized as Mainlanders refusing to accept their diminished role in Taiwan's power structure -- there seemed at the time a possibility that a Taiwanese nationalism nourished by not only the election campaign but such events as the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally might change the political environment. It finally seemed that Taiwanese could be the masters in their own country.
That was not to be, of course, the failure of the pan-greens to secure control of the legislature was a shock that left the green reeling while the blues shifted the political agenda by the "selling out" visits of their leaders to China.
Seen in this light, yesterday's verdict serves only to remind us how much we have lost. The nation-building project has not only stalled, but seems to have gone into reverse. The government might point out that their opinion polls tell them that is what the pragmatically minded Taiwanese want -- less emphasis on identity issues and more on the economy. But government is not a consumer-service industry: the customer is not always right.
The task of leadership is to educate people into seeing where their interests lie, and to understand that short-term gains might mean long-term sacrifices and vice versa.
Perhaps no amount of explanation can deter businesspeople from running lemming-like toward China, just as no amount of common sense could warn people off the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s. That does not mean that nobody should try.
Perhaps more importantly we should have some inkling of what the government intends to do when the China bubble bursts. Few developing economies have sustained an economic boom for much longer than 30 years without running into serious problems; China's has lasted 28 and counting.
Last year, for all the controversy surrounding the election and the bitterness of the campaign, there was a feeling that Taiwan might actually be "walking with destiny" to use a Churchillian phrase. Now it seems fated to become an economic colony of China, and if the pan-blues have their way a political colony as well -- such is the fate of Special Administrative Regions of the PRC, as we have seen this week.
After Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich, Winston Churchill said that he had claimed to bring back peace with honor, but in the end Britain would have neither. Taiwanese look to China thinking that by some deft compromise of core values they can have wealth, freedom and peace.
Like the British in 1939, by the time they wake up it will be far too late.
Labubu, an elf-like plush toy with pointy ears and nine serrated teeth, has become a global sensation, worn by celebrities including Rihanna and Dua Lipa. These dolls are sold out in stores from Singapore to London; a human-sized version recently fetched a whopping US$150,000 at an auction in Beijing. With all the social media buzz, it is worth asking if we are witnessing the rise of a new-age collectible, or whether Labubu is a mere fad destined to fade. Investors certainly want to know. Pop Mart International Group Ltd, the Chinese manufacturer behind this trendy toy, has rallied 178 percent
My youngest son attends a university in Taipei. Throughout the past two years, whenever I have brought him his luggage or picked him up for the end of a semester or the start of a break, I have stayed at a hotel near his campus. In doing so, I have noticed a strange phenomenon: The hotel’s TV contained an unusual number of Chinese channels, filled with accents that would make a person feel as if they are in China. It is quite exhausting. A few days ago, while staying in the hotel, I found that of the 50 available TV channels,
Kinmen County’s political geography is provocative in and of itself. A pair of islets running up abreast the Chinese mainland, just 20 minutes by ferry from the Chinese city of Xiamen, Kinmen remains under the Taiwanese government’s control, after China’s failed invasion attempt in 1949. The provocative nature of Kinmen’s existence, along with the Matsu Islands off the coast of China’s Fuzhou City, has led to no shortage of outrageous takes and analyses in foreign media either fearmongering of a Chinese invasion or using these accidents of history to somehow understand Taiwan. Every few months a foreign reporter goes to
There is no such thing as a “silicon shield.” This trope has gained traction in the world of Taiwanese news, likely with the best intentions. Anything that breaks the China-controlled narrative that Taiwan is doomed to be conquered is welcome, but after observing its rise in recent months, I now believe that the “silicon shield” is a myth — one that is ultimately working against Taiwan. The basic silicon shield idea is that the world, particularly the US, would rush to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion because they do not want Beijing to seize the nation’s vital and unique chip industry. However,
RSS