On Sunday, an international NGO called the Democratic Progressive Union (DPU) will be formally established in Taipei, an organization boasting more than 20 member countries, including a number of Taiwan's Latin American allies as well as representatives from the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
The organization is the brainchild of Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), and aims to serve as a platform for personnel and resource exchanges around the Pacific Rim, and a platform to promote democracy, ensure peace in the region and spread prosperity.
To what extent it can work substantively to actualize its vision remains to be seen. But the fact that an organization will exist in which Taiwan plays an active role will provide the country with leverage in Asia's fast-paced process of regional integration.
Last Friday, five Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, agreed to establish a single tourist visa in hopes of boosting tourism in the region. While further details of the join visa venture will be soon discussed, the idea, modeled somewhat after the EU, suggests a realignment of the region. Needless to say, the grouping of "ASEAN plus one," including China, will be extended to "ASEAN plus three," including China, Japan and Korea. It is uncertain whether it will indeed come to incorporate Australia and New Zealand, as China has suggested, to become a mammoth "East Asian Free Trade Area."
In view of the growing economic integration taking place in Asia, what role will Taiwan play? Given Taiwan's limited diplomatic allies and the threat it faces from an abominable neighbor, Taiwan meets a lot of obstacles when it tries to take part in international organizations, let alone being one that initiates them.
Without membership in major economic or political international organizations, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Asian Monetary Fund or even in the case of non-political bodies such as the World Health Organization, playing host and taking part in an international NGO organization could be one path which Taiwan could pursue, and thrive.
Although some wonder about the prospects for the DPU's longevity and how it will operate, it does, however, provide Taiwan with more international visibility. The trend of Taiwan's being edged off the map and marginalized in Asia's integration process could be ended. By participating in more regional organizations, Taiwan could take advantage of more venues and opportunities for dialogue, cooperation and mutual trust. It could help create confidence-building measures and enhance conflict prevention initiatives. More conferences and multilateral forums should invite Taiwan -- a democracy that has shared prosperous economic relations with countries in Southeast Asia -- ? as a dialogue partner. They, too, would also benefit from such an arrangement. Cooperation of this kind would not only allow for economic collaboration but also serve as a venue where all parties could work together on non-conventional security issues, such as human trafficking, HIV/AIDS and international terrorism.
In the face of obstruction from China, Taiwan should not be intimidated and thus confined. Rather, it should continue to seek a breakthrough by cooperating with non-governmental organizations that allow for transnational cooperation.
The initiative to establish the DPU should therefore be acknowledged and applauded.
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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