To understand the stark differences between China and Taiwan, you need look no further than the nearest newsstand.
In Taiwan's young democracy, you will find newspapers with an array of editorial positions covering the political spectrum. You will see articles accusing the nation's highest officials and most powerful magnates of corruption, lechery, vice and incompetence. You will see energetic and unruly activity that may be undisciplined and unprofessional, but nevertheless has all the hallmarks of a free press.
Go now to a newsstand in China.
You will find articles lauding the accomplishments of unelected bureaucrats. You will find pieces extolling the intricacies of official policies. You will find xenophobic rants aimed at inflaming nationalist sentiment. In short, you will find evidence of all that is frightening and detestable in a totalitarian regime.
Yesterday, that detestable regime sentenced a journalist to five years in prison for allegedly spying for Taiwan. His real crime, as everyone knows, was trying to write accurately about China.
Ching Cheong (
Since Ching was tried in secret, and no one knows what "evidence" was used to convict him, it is difficult to contest the case against him. But it is not difficult to see that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had an urgent and unambiguous reason to try to discredit Ching and stop his activities.
According to the CCP's mouthpiece news agency, Xinhua, China largely based its claim that Ching was a spy on "evidence" that he had met with members of a think tank -- which the reports described as a front for espionage -- when he was a reporter in Taiwan. Xinhua says that Ching took money from the think tank in exchange for providing "state secrets." There is no way to check the veracity of these claims, and it is unlikely that more details will be forthcoming.
Given the nature of the Chinese regime, it is irrelevant if Ching violated the law. The laws that Beijing applies to such matters are so sweeping that they could be applied to any journalist who writes about anything at any time.
Every so often, commentators and pundits will wax eloquent and talk about the "inevitable" slow shift toward an open, democratic society that they claim China is beginning to undergo. They point to critical blogs or articles that appear from time to time as evidence of this shift.
This ignores reality. Such criticisms appear because technology has changed, not because the nature of the Chinese regime has changed. A journalist in China can write honestly and critically for a short time, and these words will spread like wildfire on the Internet. But in the end, the plodding government goons will show up at the door, shut it all down and whisk the writer away.
Reporters Without Borders says that China has 32 journalists and 50 "Internet campaigners" in jail. Ching is just the latest in a long series of persecuted journalists. The CCP isn't changing.
Singapore Press Holdings Ltd, the firm that owns the Straits Times, has called for Beijing to release Ching because he has chronic health problems.
It isn't likely that support from the Taipei Times would add value to this effort in China's eyes, but we do call on the international community -- especially the US and the EU -- to increase pressure on China for its oppression of journalists and to push for Ching's release.
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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