Barking up the wrong tree
The speech entitled "A strong and moderate Taiwan" delivered by US Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Thomas Christensen to the US-Taiwan Business Council Defense Industry Conference at Annapolis, Maryland, on Tuesday was unusual diplomatic posturing that serves the purpose of appeasing China's communist rulers but does nothing to advance the objective of securing long-term peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.
It does not take a rocket scientist to know that the root of cross-strait tension is the inability of China's communist rulers to respect the will of people both inside and outside China's borders. With the ever-increasing Chinese military build up and the US' growing objection to overseas military intervention, the notion that the US is indefinitely capable of or willing to maintain tranquility across the Taiwan Strait is simply a myth.
The US' policy needs to focus steadfastly on transforming China into a stakeholder that is confident enough to negotiate with Taiwan on an equal footing. To do otherwise, such as the ill-conceived "frontal attack" on a democratically elected president of Taiwan, will do nothing but leave China's pledge of a "peaceful rise" sounding hollow and deceitful.
Lee Tun-Hou
Boston, Massachusetts
The IOC should wake up
When police in Beijing prevented the wife of an imprisoned Chinese social activist from going to the Philippines to receive a prestigious international humanitarian award on behalf of her husband, the international Olympic community should have been outraged by this brazen Soviet-style thuggery. And yet barely a peep was heard around the world. Even the Magsaysay Foundation, a private organization, refused to criticize China publicly.
What is going on here? In the run-up to next year's Olympics in China, the Chinese government forcibly prevents a Chinese citizen from traveling to a foreign country to receive a humanitarian leadership award for her imprisoned husband -- a 35-year-old blind man who is behind bars for unmasking abuses such as forced sterilizations and women being made to have abortions eight months into their pregnancy -- and the international Olympic community behaves as if nothing happened. Where is the world's conscience today?
Yuan Weijing (袁偉靜) is the wife of Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), and she should be free to travel anywhere in the world. She has a valid passport and a visa from the Philippine government. What China did to her is immoral, unconscionable.
Why did the International Olympic Committee (IOC) give next year's Games to China if this same nation is going to make a mockery of the concepts of freedom and justice and morality? It's not as if the IOC wasn't warned.
This incident should really serve as proof that China does not deserve to host the Olympics. It's time to call China on the carpet and stop all preparations for the Olympics. A country that does not allow the wife of a jailed man to travel abroad to pick up an international award for her husband is a country that does not deserve to host the Olympics. It's that simple. Is an international boycott gaining steam now? Maybe.
When will the international community wake up to the very "un-Olympic" spirit of the current Chinese communist regime?
If China can prevent one of its own citizens from going overseas to pick up an international leadership award without any rational explanation, then how can the members of the IOC in all good conscience continue to prepare for next year's Games in Beijing? What China did to Yuan's wife is an outrage, or should be.
After this incident, the IOC really owes the world an explanation concerning why it continues to play into China's hands.
Dan Bloom
Chiayi";
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
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,
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,
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