Why so forthcoming?
I am shocked by how forthcoming Taipei prosecutors have been in providing the public with details about an investigation that has just begun. This raises the following questions:
First, is it not illegal in Taiwan for a prosecutor to disclose private information about an ongoing case, in which charges have yet to be lain?
Second, did the Swiss Assistant Federal Prosecutor Graziella de Falco Haldemann agree to and authorize Taipei authorities to reveal that she is working with Taipei prosecutor Ching Chi-jen (慶啟人) on a “money laundering” case?
Third, has de Falco Haldemann actually stated that the case involves “money laundering” and did she permit the Taipei authorities to give her name as a source in the investigation?
It would be interesting to hear Ching’s and de Falco Haldemann’s answers to these questions.
SING YOUNG
Taoyuan
Avoiding a deep freeze
Recent remarks pertaining to US arms sales to Taiwan by officials in Taiwan and the US have been contradictory and may have blurred the picture.
What seems clear, however, is that Washington has at least mulled the possibility of a “temporary freeze.”
Equally clear is that in this three-way tug-of-war on arming Taiwan, Beijing’s resolve is pitted against Washington’s ambivalence and President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) hidden agenda, a mix that could very well result in a temporary freeze becoming permanent.
A freeze could stem from the belief that the rationale for strengthening Taiwan’s defenses — as cited a few months ago in the Pentagon’s Annual Report on Military Power of the People’s Republic of China — has disappeared, or from Washington having found an alternative accommodation for Taiwan.
However, Taipei’s efforts to diminish tensions and, in the process, Ma’s abrogation of Taiwan’s sovereignty have not resulted in a diminution of China’s military threat to Taiwan. The missile threat against Taiwan has reportedly continued to grow both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Despite the Taiwan Relations Act, Taiwan’s democracy could easily lose out to US strategic and economic interests, which would have an impact on Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan.
Were it not for international economic considerations, Taiwan — once a key link in the US Western Pacific strategic chain of democracies — would be relegated by the freeze to a land that must be kept out of Beijing’s hands lest the Chinese military use it as a base for force projection in the Pacific.
Commercial interests, the equivalent of a life jacket for Taiwan, are what Ma seems to be trying to remove, as if he were intent on diminishing Taiwan’s importance to the US. Ma is on his way to lifting practically all restrictions on exporting sensitive technologies to China, with an eye to relocating Taiwan’s high-tech industries there.
Under such circumstances, turmoil in Taiwan — even to the extent that it would preclude its use as a military base for either China or the US — would pose little threat to international trade, which is essential to China’s survival and US economic health.
Perhaps this scenario is what Beijing and Washington have in mind, in which case an arms freeze would make sense. The scandals surrounding former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) could make such an outcome more feasible.
Ma recently reclassified as “open source” all the documents that Chen had classified to shield himself from prosecution stemming from his alleged misappropriation of “state affairs funds.” This was followed by the unreeling of Chen’s possible improprieties involving multi-million dollar foreign account deposits.
Combined, these two developments hold the potential of dealing a terrible blow to Taiwanese consciousness, for which Chen once was the spearhead.
All these developments could set the stage for the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) implementation of China’s “Anti-Secession” Law, which poses a direct threat to the survival of this nation.
Unless Taiwanese get back on their feet fast enough and start opposing Ma’s pro-China policies, the nightmarish scenario of an impoverished nation facing perpetual unrest could materialize.
HUANG JEI-HSUAN
Los Angeles, California
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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