There are a number of people with deep blue convictions who fully support President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) policy of capitulation to China. Some of them even say he should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Back in the real world, the similarities between Ma and the ill-fated last Ming emperor are all too obvious.
The Nobel Peace Prize might have become cheapened of late, but not to the extent that it should be awarded to a politician who would sacrifice freedom, democracy and human rights to a communist dictatorship.
Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher did the same thing when she ceded the territory of Hong Kong to China, which is an undemocratic country with no respect for human rights — and I don’t recall her being nominated for the prize.
Taiwan is a democracy, but only as a result of the sacrifice and struggle of a colonized people: It was not easily come by.
All Taiwan wants is to maintain its autonomy, and it has no wish to threaten any other nation. Any politician that sacrifices Taiwan’s democracy and allows it to become a colony of totalitarian China would be worse than the last Ming emperor. What sense would the peace prize nomination make then?
China lovers could even consider Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) for nomination. He fits the bill perfectly and the prize would surely be his for the taking.
The Chinese seem to be good at casting things in a rosy light. It has certainly happened before.
Former Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) circumvented using the words “communist dictatorship” with Orwellian aplomb, coining the phrase “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
His move toward a capitalist model, leading the Chinese economy to a turn in fortunes, was dubbed China’s “rise.”
Hu is quite happy to bounce along the capitalist road and watch his country’s “rise,” but we all know that “Chinese characteristics” under a one-party dictatorship is, by any name, the sacrifice of democracy and the suppression of human rights.
Every moment of every day Beijing is in a state of paranoia about independence for Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet, afraid that people will call for freedom, democracy and human rights. If China is rising and becoming such a “great nation,” why would so many people be demanding independence?
This is one of those “rare historic opportunities” that Hu has talked of.
He should change his approach and adopt the magnanimity befitting a great nation. It would reinvent China’s image in an instant.
He could embrace a democratic system, guarantee human rights, respect the choice of the Taiwanese people and welcome the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet and Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur leader, to Xinjiang, allowing self-rule for those regions.
A great nation on the rise should be able to demonstrate this kind of confidence.
If US President Barack Obama could win the Nobel Peace Prize, what is to stop Hu being nominated?
It wouldn’t hurt China to drop the idea of unification and allow Taiwan de jure independence, respecting the choice of Taiwanese.
Both sides would gain a peaceful co-existence, Hu would win the Nobel Peace Prize and Ma could avoid going down in history as a “last emperor.”
Now that’s what I call a win-win situation.
James Wang is a media commentator.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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,
RSS