The inevitable came to pass on Friday when Taiwan Post Co announced plans to change its name back to Chunghwa Post Co. The corporation’s chairman, Wu Min-yu (吳民佑), said that the change was in response to a resolution adopted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in April that said the company had not completed the required legal procedures.
Saying that the original process was unlawful — the bills were stalled in the KMT-controlled legislature — was a disingenuous ploy to distract attention from the real issue of why the name was changed in the first place.
When the Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) changed Chunghwa Post to Taiwan Post in February of last year, Steve Chen (陳瑞隆), then-minister of economic affairs, made it clear that changing the titles of state-run enterprises would “help avoid confusion and increase Taiwan’s international presence.”
Other name changes included Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC) to CPC Corp, Taiwan and China Shipbuilding Corp (CSBC) to Taiwan International Shipbuilding Corp. Although the DPP was justifiably raked over the coals at the time for its belated and half-baked attempts (though the word “China” was removed from the Chinese-language titles they were retained in some of the English-language acronyms), it was an effort to bring the names closer to reality.
It is fitting then that the current administration, which seems intent on diminishing Taiwan’s international presence, would go after Taiwan Post first because it is a clear manifestation, though mostly symbolic, of Taiwan’s status as a sovereign nation. It is only a matter of time before other state-run corporations follow suit.
Meanwhile, on the same day Wu made the announcement, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was patting himself on the back — again — over his Pyrrhic victory with China’s state-run media.
In a meeting at the Presidential Office with Australian Commerce and Industry Office in Taipei representative Stephen Waters, Ma said that China’s willingness to use Taiwan’s official title Zhonghua Taibei (中華台北, or Chinese Taipei) at the Olympics rather than Zhongguo Taibei (中國台北, or Taipei, China), represented a triumph and demonstrated the ability of both sides to work towards a “diplomatic truce.”
This is laughable. The very idea of a “diplomatic truce” implies that both sides are independent countries that use diplomacy to solve disputes. Beijing will use whatever language it needs to achieve its goals of unification and cares little for the concerns of Taiwan.
Or, for that matter, the international community.
It has become apparent in the past week that Beijing is backtracking on its earlier pledges to grant foreign accredited journalists unfettered access to the Internet during the Olympic games. So what goodwill can Ma expect from China?
Taken together with his recent statements about not following the tradition of the previous administration in using the name Taiwan in its bid to join the UN, it is clear that the current administration is turning back the clock on sovereignty under the paradoxical notion that it will somehow increase Taiwan’s visibility on the international stage.
But then again, the administration doesn’t seem as concerned about Taiwan’s diplomatic impasse as much as it cares about appeasing the dictators in Beijing.
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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