Today marked the third time in as many months that I ran across Mormons proselytizing in the street. As I was making a left turn into a narrow street I was forced to swing out wider than I had intended to avoid a Mormon on a bicycle importuning some luckless local on a motorcycle in the middle of the intersection.
The Mormons smiled patronizingly at me when I yelled at them colorfully to stop hassling people in the road. They were indifferent to realize how dangerous such activity is. As the light turned green, they were still there, preventing the scooter driver from moving forward.
In Taiwan customary usage is that if a pedestrian or bicyclist is struck and killed by a vehicle, the vehicle driver will generally do jail time regardless of who is actually at fault.
Each time some Mormon runs out into traffic to harass a local sitting at a light, he threatens the safety and well-being of every individual in that intersection, because whoever hits him is going to jail, most unjustly.
Religious proselytizing is by its nature dehumanizing, turning human beings with needs and agendas of their own into mere objects that validate the proselytizer's own insecurity and need for control of others. Every Mormon missionary who behaves in such a manner simply makes it that much harder for those of us long-term expats who have to live in the stink they leave behind.
Eventually even the seemingly limitless tolerance of the wonderfully patient Taiwanese will reach its limits, and all here will suffer.
It is high time this dangerous and discourteous activity of plunging into traffic to accost passing motorists was brought to a halt. It is time that Mormon missionaries displayed maturity, dignity and restraint, and behaved as responsible members of the foreign community whose widespread acceptance in Taiwan they constantly abuse for their own religious purposes.
Michael Turton
Chaoyang University
Taichung
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS