South Korea's snub of President Chen Shui-bian's (
National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Mark Chen (陳唐山) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) were turned away from the ceremony at the last minute after China threatened to withdraw its envoy and boycott the inauguration.
Reports have said that leaks from Taiwan about the "secret deal" regarding the duo's attendance enabled Beijing to pressure Seoul, while Mark Chen's sensitive position was also said to have been behind the rejection. The NSC chief's background as a prominent member of the independence movement would certainly not have helped matters.
More interesting was China's rejection of Wang, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) figure. The fact that China was prepared to so publicly disrespect a member of the KMT -- which has, we must remember, a shady cooperation pact with the Chinese Communist Party -- speaks volumes about Beijing's intolerance of anything Taiwanese on the diplomatic front, and would seemingly discredit KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) plans, should he be elected president next month, to strike a "modus vivendi" to solve the cross-strait impasse and expand Taiwan's international space.
With everything that has happened in the past eight years, it would be easy to forget that Chen Shui-bian struck an equally conciliatory note with Beijing prior to and following his election in 2000.
Indeed, in his 2001 New Year speech, Chen offered to "seek permanent peace and build a new mechanism for political assimilation between the two sides" through "cross-strait trade, economic and cultural integration."
Back then, the president even said the "one China" concept would not present a problem as "the ROC [Republic of China] Constitution already delineated the nature of `one China.'" His only caveats were that Beijing respect the "ROC's survival space and its international dignity, and publicly renounce the use of force."
It would seem that Ma's novel cross-strait solution, now that he has promised not to talk about unification, is like old wine in a new bottle. Ma's Democratic Progressive Party rival Frank Hsieh (
The reaction here to China's latest act of suppression was also interesting, as it once again demonstrated the split personality of the KMT, with presentable figurehead Ma seemingly at odds with the party's pro-China core.
On the one hand, Ma, as he has done on several occasions, slammed China for marginalizing Taiwan, while on the other KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (
Not a word of criticism for Beijing from the patriotic Lin, but what should we expect when all Lin and his cronies have done in reaction to every diplomatic setback over the last eight years is snipe from the galleries?
Lin's gloating should serve as a timely reminder to all of the dangerous, pro-China baggage that will accompany Ma should he win the presidency, while China's behavior proves that, contrary to what it says on his campaign posters, a Ma victory next month would not -- diplomatically and internationally at least -- result in any substantive breakthrough.
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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