China's "united front" campaign against Taiwan moved into new territory when Beijing marked Retrocession Day yesterday. Over decades , China has ignored this day, but this year Beijing invited members of Taiwan's opposition parties and senior Chinese leaders to take part in three days of festivities.
When the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was in power, Retrocession Day was a big event in Taiwan, but after the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took the presidency, this changed. The new government's interpretation is that Oct. 25 signifies no more than the end of the Sino-Japanese War, and is not related to Taiwan's sovereignty. For this reason, commemorative activities in Taiwan were much more low key this year.
It is awkward for Beijing to celebrate the victory in the Sino-Japanese war, as the KMT led efforts in the war against Japan, not the Chinese Communist Party.
But China's celebrations are also a jab at Japan. With tensions between the two countries on the rise, China can use the event to remind the international community of Japan's World War II atrocities and consolidate its image as a victor in the war. Beijing achieves the double goal of obstructing Japan's bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat and consolidating its superpower status on diplomatic, military and economic fronts.
China also aims to create the impression that Taiwan is a part of China.
In fact, the sovereignty of Taiwan and that of China are completely unrelated. The 1951 San Francisco Treaty states that Japan renounces all right, title and claims to Formosa and the Pescadores. But nowhere does it specify that sovereignty was returned to the Republic of China (ROC), let alone the People's Republic of China.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (
Sovereignty is vested in Taiwan's inhabitants. It has therefore long existed as a sovereign nation. All that remains is for this to be recognized by a change of the national title and constitutional amendments.
When Chen Yi (
The early days of KMT rule in Taiwan were characterized by the 228 Incident and then the White Terror, with 38 years of martial law. The initial wave of sentiment in Taiwan about returning to the embrace of the ancestral country was destroyed by these events. But the idea of Taiwan's retrocession was inculcated into the collective memory of the Taiwanese people by its masters. It was only after the KMT lost power in 2000 that the people of Taiwan were able to adequately reflect on the true situation.
On Oct. 25, 1945, Taiwan saw the end of 50 years of Japanese colonial government and World War II hostilities, but it was immediately plunged into yet another period of rule by foreign overlords. Now, Oct. 25 is seen as the end of the war, and a cause for neither joy nor sorrow. One thing is certain: The fate of this nation now rests solely in the hands of its citizens.
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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