The US claims to want to maintain the "status quo" across the Taiwan Strait, yet what the US has been up to recently is helping China degrade Taiwan. Many people consider Taiwan to be the levee of the Western Pacific. If this levee is breached through negligence, the "Red Storm" will be more catastrophic than Hurricane Katrina.
Of course the US needs to look after its national interest, but it should not do so at the expense of Taiwan, or any other country. Small nations have dignity too. China will take a foot for every inch you give it. No matter how much the US may compromise, the US will never satisfy China or get what it wants in return.
The US' rejection of President Chen Shui-bian's (
When Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) visited the US, he was treated as if he were the president of Taiwan. The Bush administration wants China to negotiate directly with the government of Taiwan, yet the US refused Chen's request to land in New York or Los Angeles, as if he were a terrorist.
The reason for this is that China asked the US not to let Chen go to Washington.
The US is fighting hard in Iraq to promote democracy, yet at the same time it is unintentionally pushing Taiwan away from democracy and toward communism by trying to please China.
The "one China" policy adopted by former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger must be critically reviewed by the State Department. It is a bad policy for Taiwan, the US and China.
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
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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