Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Joanna Lei (
The broadside came after the American Forces Press Service, a US Department of Defense publication, ran stories on its Web site last weekend on the DPP's planned plebiscite -- for entering the UN as "Taiwan" -- as an "independence" referendum.
If either had bothered to read to the end of the paragraph then they could have saved their breath. In their attempts to highlight the reference to the KMT's dreaded "independence," they failed to notice -- or deliberately overlooked -- the very end of the same sentence, where the author paraphrased US President George W. Bush as referring to Taiwan as an "island nation."
A strange choice of words, this, considering it has been just a few weeks since Dennis Wilder, a top Bush adviser and senior director for East Asian affairs at the National Security Council, stated categorically that the US does not view Taiwan (or the Republic of China) as a state.
Nevertheless, Taiwan's representatives in the US immediately contacted their Washington counterparts for clarification and, as if by magic, the offending references were promptly corrected the following day by the Pentagon, which conceded that the original wording was "inaccurate."
Thus the true culprit in this instance was revealed: careless reporting.
As anyone involved in journalism is aware, reporting on cross-strait affairs can be a minefield. It is a forum where adding a stray "re" to the front of "unification" can mean trouble.
Yet time and again we see the same erroneous and sensational reporting on Taiwan-China affairs. It is easy to lose count of the number of times one sees the phrase: "The US is obligated to come to Taiwan's aid in the event of a Chinese invasion" or variations on this theme in international wire copy, despite the fact that it is incorrect.
Those with limited knowledge of nuances and terminology used in cross-strait affairs can get into all kinds of trouble with just one or two inaccurate words or phrases.
Jim Garamone, the offender in this case, is an experienced reporter who, according to his online biography, has covered defense issues since 1976. Whether he has had much experience in reporting on cross-strait affairs is not clear. But one thing is for sure: Garamone has had a week to remember the fallout from this minor fuss -- and a crash course in Cross-Strait Terminology 101 to boot. It is quite safe to say that he will not make the same mistakes again.
This highlights the pressure that reporters who work for responsible news organizations must endure. Their work is held up to the highest standards of scrutiny, and any incorrect information or falsehoods are liable to have serious consequences and are usually immediately brought to light.
Unfortunately, Taiwanese reporters and politicians are not subject to the same stringent standards as their US counterparts. While Garamone's errors were quickly highlighted and changed, the same cannot be said about the KMT legislators who used this "inaccurate" report to make political capital.
So far there have been no reports of Lei and Shuai holding a press conference to retract their comments and even apologize. But why should we expect contrition? Their mission to undermine a democratic referendum process and turn public opinion against the government has been accomplished and for that they make no apology.
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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