In the wake of President Chen Shui-bian's
Despite the scheduled date, opinion among the party's heavyweights on whether there is a need to hold such a debate is divided.
While some argue that it is good and necessary to have an open debate on the party's line on China in order to forge a consensus, other party big guns such as Vice President Annette Lu
While holding a debate is laudable as it would allow other voices in the party to be heard, it is worth keeping in mind that action still speaks louder than words.
The party must not get bogged down in fruitless debate and end up talking the talk but failing to walk the walk, especially as the president has already clearly outlined the core values for the administration's China policy.
Add the fact that following Chen's New Year's Day address, in which he said the government would adopt a tougher stance toward China by promoting an "active management, effective opening" approach on cross-strait economic and trade exchanges, the new Cabinet under Premier Su Tseng-chang
It is all too predictable how the nation's pro-China media and the pan-blue camp would most likely take advantage of the DPP's debate to tout the value of investing in China and attempt to swing public opinion in this regard.
Both Chen's "active management, effective opening" policy and the proposal to scrap the NUC and the national unification guidelines are a wake-up call to direct the Taiwanese people's attention to the nation's growing trade imbalance with China and the importance of upholding the spirit of democracy in which the fate of Taiwan must be decided by its own people.
The National Unification Council was a government agency founded in 1990 by the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime to promote Taiwan's eventual unification with China.
The government cannot violate the spirit of democracy by making unification with China the only option for its people. Taiwan's future should be determined by its 23 million people, whether the result be unification with China or an independent Taiwan.
The DPP must guard against the pan-blues' attempt to co-opt any debate on the party's China policy and let the government's policy be shaken again -- as the opposition had done many times during the past six years of Chen's presidency.
The government must live up to its pledge to secure Taiwan's national interests and not let Chen's "active management, effective opening" approach and other initiatives on China policy end up as empty political slogans.
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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