Taiwan's international sporting profile remains reliant on the efforts of outstanding individuals such as baseballer Wang Chien-ming (
If Taiwanese are to take themselves seriously, and expect others to treat them with respect, then there are certain standards of behavior in the nation's name that must be upheld by its officers. This is no less true for individuals working in high-profile positions in seemingly apolitical areas such as sports.
Wu Ching-kuo (
This is wishful thinking at best, whether or not both sides can claim political capital from the torch's route. Indeed, it is laughable that sports -- which China sees more as nationalistic weapons than forums for constructively interacting with other nations -- will defuse tensions given how poverty-stricken the sporting culture of both countries is.
Ideally, if Wu were acting in Taiwan's interests, he would insist that the torch only enter Taiwan if it is not used to bolster Chinese propaganda. But there's little hope of that. Wu is serving on the Beijing Olympic Games Coordination Commission, so we can expect that he will be well-behaved and not do or say anything that would embarrass his superiors.
However, when Wu was asked if Taiwanese and Chinese should march under the same flag -- like athletes from North and South Korea -- he came out with the astonishing response that, according to a Chinese source, "it was still too early to speculate, as the political climate in Taiwan might change."
If Wu did say this, then he is a fool and should be disowned and any association between him and Taiwanese sporting pursuits permanently severed as far as the government is able.
But we cannot be optimistic that the government will do this, given that the Chen administration and its tag team of underperforming premiers have paralyzed themselves with cowardice in acting on issues over which it has the authority to act swiftly and without legislative interference.
In the meantime, here are a few questions for Wu.
First: Whose flag should the athletes march under? The Chinese are hardly likely to march under the Olympic flag, and especially not at home. And there's not much else to choose from.
And second: Has Wu divorced himself so far from Taiwanese public sentiment that he would consider his language to be inoffensive to more than a few Taiwanese independence blowhards?
Taiwanese sport suffers because its administrators are underfunded, undermanned and, in many if not most cases, incompetent and embarrassingly ignorant of the sports they represent.
Taiwanese sport will suffer even more if the government does not have the guts to disassociate itself from this increasingly shifty member of the politically mercenary IOC.
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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