From killing Chinese communists to shaking hands with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) 180-degree turn should be watched with caution by Chinese people who desire democracy.
Can cooperation between the two parties bring happiness and prosperity to the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait?
"Faced with China's rise, we should be benign, optimistic and focused on co-existence and shared prosperity," former KMT chairman Lien Chan (
Chinese people should be able to surmise from such statements that Lien was in fact talking about co-existence between two parties -- the KMT and the CCP -- and not about the co-existence of a democratic China and a democratic Taiwan.
Lien never got over his loss in the presidential election, nor did he ever understand the true meaning of democracy, which is why he is so keen on flying across the Strait to gain support there to undermine the democratically elected president of his rival party in Taiwan.
"Shared prosperity" to Lien means the prosperity of a few party officials in the KMT and the CCP parties, not the prosperity of the two nations in general.
Chinese should remember the history of KMT corruption that made Chiang Kai-shek (
Every amendment to the party's policies or regulations has been tailor-made for presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
Chinese should embrace the idea of an independent and democratic Taiwan because democracy in Taiwan places pressure on the Chinese authorities to democratize.
There are ample opportunities for joint prosperity after China becomes democratic, and when both sides respect each other's cultural and historical diversity, there will always be a space for regional co-operation.
Some potential models are the bigger EU, the smaller Nordic Council and, somewhere in between, the Council of the Baltic Sea States.
These inter-governmental organizations were formed out of a need for regional cooperation and without disrespecting the member states' borders or cultural diversity.
Taiwanese democracy and independence are not a threat to regional security in the Asia-Pacific region, but rather an opportunity for China to follow suit.
In contrast, China's ongoing authoritarian rule not only conflicts with the Chinese desire for democracy, but also represents a threat to China's neighbors and the rest of the world.
Who will be the next Chinese leader with a clear vision for its people and for its neighbors?
The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are waiting for a Chinese Gorbachev to appear and for Lien Chan to disappear.
Alison Hsieh
Greece
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
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,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
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