It doesn't get any more ironic than this.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is spending considerable time and effort courting the pan-blue camp in preparation for what it sees as an eventual China-friendly legislature and executive.
This courtship runs the gamut of ideology, inducement and espionage; its targets are prominent (the pan-blue leadership) and obscure (pro-blue-camp businesspeople and elements in the military).
All too often the activities of these pro-Beijing politicians and others provide Chinese media outlets with a positive slant on Beijing's bottom line of annexation. One might expect, therefore, that this strategy would include feverish denunciations of President Chen Shui-bian (
But this is not the case. The corruption probe into the activities of the first family has resulted in a telling silence from the official hacks who tell Chinese what to think.
Confirming weeks of overseas speculation, sources have told Reuters that official media are not permitted to report on Chen's miseries because of the fear that average Chinese will put two and two together and demand accountability from their own local governments.
It appears, therefore, that governance in China is so riddled with graft and its beneficiaries so detested by ordinary people that the misfortunes of Chen and his family pose a direct threat to the authority of the CCP.
Indeed, it is now in Beijing's propaganda interests that Chen stay in office until his term expires, and not just because his vice president is unpredictable and also pro-independence: Chen's downfall would present the most inconvenient of symbols for China's millions of potentially restive peasants and workers when the Chinese economy reaches the end of its boom phase.
What this also demonstrates is that the Chinese government does not trust its population to distinguish between different modes and scales of graft. If Taiwan's first family takes a beating for the alleged misuse of government funds, then it seems that the CCP vultures who squeeze and steal land from peasants are more vulnerable to retaliation.
In promoting Taiwan as an eternal part of the Chinese state and its people as eternally "Chinese," Beijing's spin doctors normally attempt to lecture Taiwanese on what should be thought, said and done. But they also run the inevitable risk of infecting the person on the Chinese street with the bilateral reasoning that what Taiwanese do is also what Chinese can do.
If this is the case, then the CCP has every reason to worry, and every reason to continue portraying Taiwan as a bumpkin-filled backwater that should have had Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Lien Chan (
China backing Chen Shui-bian: This gem of irony, if nothing else, should provide the beleaguered Chen with a little comfort. He may have lost the support of most Taiwanese, but his travails are rapidly emerging as a model of suffering for a population across the Strait hungry for scapegoats of their own.
This paradox also shows up the pan-blue camp for the yoked "Greater China" partner that it is: In the end, when Beijing's interests clash with those of the KMT and its splinter parties, Beijing's interests must prevail.
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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