According to a recent poll, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Soon after Ma became the chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), he sold some "KMT assets" which are considered national assets by many people. Before this dispute on ownership is settled, he has already put hundreds of millions of US dollars into KMT bank accounts that can be used to finance his 2008 presidential election campaign.
A few years ago, a Harvard alumnus openly accused Ma of being one of the spies monitoring and reporting "dissident" activities and remarks made by overseas Taiwanese students to the KMT totalitarian regime during the "white terror" era. Many students were blacklisted and were not allowed to go back to their own homeland.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) nominated Ma to run for the mayor of Taipei as "a new Taiwanese." However, Mayor Ma has acted more like "a new Chinese" -- praising China's freedom, flying China's flag and banning Taiwan's own flag, adopting China's transliteration system instead of Taiwan's own, offering unification of Taiwan with China if China apologizes for the Tiananmen incident, keeping silent on the democratic activity in Hong Kong and China's missile buildup against Taiwan, boycotting the arms purchase bill recklessly and asking foreigners to pronounce "Taipei" as "Taibei" in line with Beijing. Ma has become the favorite son of China. But is he the right choice for Taiwan in 2008?
Under Ma's seven-year administration, it's hard to cite major accomplishments in Taipei. Three inexcusable catastrophic incidents did occur: the cover-up of SARS cases, flooding of the rapid transit system and sending a critically injured child to a Taichung hospital.
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
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