Circus maestro P.T. Barnum would be proud of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Su Chi (
In his latest salvo of unverifiable claims, Su has supposedly relied on a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) central executive committee member to tell the world that the DPP government is to start developing nuclear weapons, but not without finding an escape route for President Chen Shui-bian (
Like so many of his colleagues, Su has a record of disseminating bogus information and then retracting it -- but only if called on it by the aggrieved parties. Sober analysts will therefore take his grandstanding with several pillars of salt, especially given that KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
And for Su to suggest that Taiwan is becoming a North Korean-style state is typical of his idiocy and contempt for the Taiwanese public, but he has also failed to explain why Chen, presumably a Kim Jong-il in the making, would seek asylum in the US if he were angling to be this country's next dictator.
Yet Su has touched on an interesting issue. If there is any truth to his words, then it appears that the Taiwanese government is learning from trends in Northeast Asia and the Middle East: Drop the "N" word and people start to take you very seriously. In Taiwan's case that would be a welcome change.
We look forward to people less predictable than Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
Su serves on the legislative National Defense Committee, and on Wednesday he justified the committee slashing the military's missile budget by saying that it would provoke China.
Such a landmark action and reasoning by the KMT would ordinarily ring alarm bells all the way to the White House. But these are not ordinary times, and the White House appears just as clueless about the agenda of the KMT as it was at the beginning of the Bush administration.
The KMT is fast shedding any pretense of being a "nationalist" party in opposition to its communist foe. Its latest act indicates that -- in strategic and ideological terms -- it is settling comfortably into the role of proxy for the Chinese Communist Party.
For years now KMT politicians have been making trips to Beijing that compromised national security -- all as Taiwan's intelligence and security services sat on their hands. And in almost every action it has taken since 2000, the KMT has ensured that Taiwan's ability to defend itself would be retarded in the face of China's malevolent and growing strength.
It is clear that Ma Ying-jeou's various protestations against Beijing's ill treatment of its subjects amount to little more than fluff.
The big picture is this: Even if Ma were sincere about protecting Taiwan's democracy, his hardliner party machine is not. His inability to control the hardliners indicates that his election would bring back to power the kinds of people that most Taiwanese had assumed wilted away sometime after the end of martial law.
The KMT has blustered for years about what to do with the cross-strait impasse. It has lectured us on restraint and the "status quo." But this week it has reached its tipping point: It is now attempting to have the "status quo" collapse irreversibly in China's favor.
Which brings us back to Barnum: The more flamboyant the denials from the KMT, the better. But when it comes to cross-strait punditry, and especially in the US, there are suckers born every minute.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017