Stating the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) shares close historical links with Taiwan, KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said on Sunday that the party would soon present a detailed position paper which will emphasize the party's bonds with Taiwan and hence dispel allegations that the KMT is an "alien regime."
Given the massive problems that the new party chairman has in revamping the 111-year-old KMT's image -- convincing people that its kleptomania has been cured, for example -- it is puzzling that he thought the best place to start was in the distortion and fabrication of history. Or, then again, perhaps not, given Ma's well-known problems with the truth.
According to Ma's remarks to the Central Review Committee -- whose membership is comprised mainly of the party old guard -- the party historically has been a friend of Taiwan because KMT founder Sun Yat-sen (
Actually anyone with a knowledge of the history of those times knows that it was Japan, not Taiwan, which was the main base of activity of the revolutionary movement.
It is also worth noting that when Lin Hsien-tang (
Taiwan was abandoned by the KMT to sort out its own problems.
In another attempt to emphasize Sun's connection with Taiwan, Ma mentioned how Sun, who then was strapped for funds under the rule of military strong-man Yuan Shih-kai (
And of course whatever Taiwanese sympathy there may have been for Sun at the turn of the last century, this has nothing to do with supporting the brutal instrument of Chiang Kai-shek's (
Actually the link is even more tenuous. The history of the KMT can be traced back to the Society for Regenerating China (
Ma went on also to say that "the KMT is not a foreign regime and that its demand to restore Taiwan during the War of Resistance [World War II] suggests the KMT harbored a pro-localization spirit."
This remark is Ma at his most mendacious. Other than a handful of Taiwanese such as Lien Chen-tung (
There is nothing wrong with the idea of the KMT having a "Taiwan discourse," and beginning to talk about history -- something the party has long neglected. But Ma's treatment of it shows that this is a subject on which the KMT cannot be trusted. Generations of dictatorship suppressing the truth has resulted in the KMT believing its own lies. Perhaps even Ma doesn't know the truth.
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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