The Wall Street Journal, in its Wednesday, Aug. 24 editorial entitled "Taiwan Fiddles," said that "Taiwan spends a small fortune lobbying Washington so the US will ride to its rescue in case of a Chinese attack. Yet more than four years after the US offered a package of advanced defense weapons, politicians in Taipei still haven't decided to buy them. This isn't helping Taiwan's cause in Washington .... If Taiwan wants the US to risk its blood and treasure in the event of an attack, paying for an adequate defense would seem to be a minimum prerequisite."
The Wall Street Journal is one of the most popular and influential newspaper in the US.
It is read by leaders in business, politics, and education.
The editorial is sarcastic and condemning, which does not help Taiwan's survival and certainly damages the image of Taiwan in the US and throughout the world.
It portrays Taiwan as a nation whose leaders are selfish, irresponsible, and possess no pride.
The Taiwanese must understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch in the free world.
International support is important for Taiwan's survival in the current political situation, but the American public is now tired of going to war to fight for another country after seeing what is happening in Iraq.
The bad timing is also unfortunate, because Taiwan is now trying to get into the UN and needs all the public support it can get.
It is time the Taiwanese people wake up, shake up, stand up and tell Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Ken Huang
Memphis, Tennessee
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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