Taiwan’s independence supporters must tell US economist Paul Krugman about tomorrow’s protest and why they will be taking to the streets.
Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize for economics, was in China before arriving in Taiwan on Thursday. He is expected to stay in Taiwan for three days.
Krugman has international influence. If he knew that tomorrow’s demonstration is being held to show how unhappy Taiwanese are about the pro-China policies of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government, he might mention the issue in his column in the New York Times. This would give the Taiwanese public more of a chance to stop Ma’s “democratic dictatorship” and block his goal of unification with China.
I earnestly hope that senior pro-independence figures, English media outlets who care about Taiwan and academics and other experts who write in English will take advantage of this opportunity to let him hear the true voices of the Taiwanese public, perhaps by making contributions to Krugman’s blog.
Every extra influential friend Taiwan has in the international community gives us an extra chance to work our way out of the current troubles.
A few years ago, Krugman praised Taiwan’s health insurance system, which was initiated and realized by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). In Beijing on Monday, Krugman said — straight out — that China’s huge trade surplus was the result of government interference and that there was no way the world could continue to accept this situation.
Krugman also said that the yuan would not become an international currency in our lifetime because China lacks a solid bond market.
Taiwan’s pro-unification media will not highlight such comments, and may not even report them. These outlets, which view China as the mother country, will only give space to material such as China and the US being dubbed as the “G2.” They could twist Krugman’s statement that he knew nothing about the mooted economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) into making him sound as if he supports an ECFA and that it would be good for both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwanese media outlets are, after all, brainwashing readers into thinking that relying on China is the only way to save the economy.
We must remind Krugman that Taiwan is facing a grave threat to its democracy. We must tell him that Taiwan has a minority of “high-class Mainlanders” whose fathers gained privileges through bloody, totalitarian rule and that this minority is now using its inherited privileges to control the media and the judiciary to manipulate the Hoklo and Hakka ethnic groups that make up the majority of the population.
We need to let Krugman know about the deal that the KMT has with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to allow the latter to take over Taiwan.
Krugman once warned the world that economic development will not decrease military conflict. Meanwhile, China has warned us of seven circumstances or “red lines” that, if crossed, will result in China taking military action against Taiwan — even as our professional student of a president runs around pinning Taiwan’s hope on Chinese goodwill.
Krugman once said about trade with China: “They give us poisoned products, we give them worthless paper.” He also opposed a Chinese buyout of major US petroleum explorer and marketer Unocal for strategic reasons.
I believe he will listen to the Taiwanese public and I would implore the leaders of pro-Taiwan media outlets to make good use of this opportunity.
Lin Chih-hung is a political commentator.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017