The government decided last night to apply for WHO membership and World Health Assembly (WHA) observer status this year under the name “Taiwan” again, an idea president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has opposed.
In an interview with the Central News Agency last week, Ma said he favored a bid for WHA observer status under the name “Chinese Taipei.” Saying there had not been any success in the quest to join international organizations with names other than “Chinese Taipei,” Ma said he believed that this was a workable title and one that Beijing has not objected to. He went on to say that he strongly opposed the idea of applying for full WHO membership under the name “Taiwan,” and criticized the government’s WHO bid last year as a “total embarrassment.”
It is amazing how quickly Ma can go from trumpeting slogans such as “Taiwan Moves Forward” and “Taiwan Will Definitely Win” during the presidential campaign, to “strongly opposed to the idea of using the name Taiwan to apply for full WHO membership.” Coupled with his reservation last week over the use of the word “Taiwan” on stamps to mark his inauguration, no wonder the Democratic Progressive Party caucus has accused him of “discarding the name ‘Taiwan’ like ‘toilet paper’” following his win on March 22.
While some say Ma is just being practical with his “Chinese Taipei” proposal, which might enable Taiwan to inch forward, it is still quite sad that he has not hesitated to criticize the government for embarrassing the country by using the name “Taiwan” while remaining silent about China’s efforts to blockade Taiwan internationally.
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) signed a five-point “vision for cross-strait peace” in April 2005. In that pact the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agreed to push for negotiations on Taiwanese participation in international organizations and events, with priority placed on Taiwan’s WHO membership.
So why doesn’t Ma put that “agreement” to the test and see what Beijing’s promises are worth? Why rush to automatically downgrade Taiwan’s WHA bid to the ridiculous name of “Chinese Taipei”?
Ma has said that he would not “clash with China” should he be elected but his “self-censoring” approach makes one wonder about the fate of Taiwan in the international arena.
Vice president-elect Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) will attend the Boao Forum in China today and is very likely to meet Hu on the sidelines. Will Siew be upholding Taiwan’s dignity, or follow Ma’s “gentlemanly approach” and censor himself?
Choosing not to “clash” with China does not mean Beijing will leave Taiwan alone. Self-censorship will not stop China from obstructing Taiwan in international matters. Even before he takes office, Ma should be willing to defend the country’s name and dignity, rather than fall over himself with awkward constructs aimed at appeasing Beijing. He should keep in mind that he campaigned for and won election to be president of the Republic of China, not the Republic of Chinese Taipei.
If the president of the country can’t stand firm and defend his nation’s identity and title, why should anyone else?
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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