The earthquake and subsequent tsunami which struck Japan last Friday has brought devastation and destruction to large parts of the coastal area near Sendai, northeast of Tokyo. The Japanese authorities are now working hard to bring relief to those affected by the disaster.
As members of the world community we all need to provide all the assistance we can to Japan and its people in their time of need.
Many countries have already sent search and rescue teams and financial aid, but the scale of the disaster is such that it will take a long-term Herculean effort to provide proper care to those who lost their homes, family members and in some instances everything they owned.
Since Taiwan is one of Japan’s closest neighbors, it is in a particularly good position to provide such help. Many Taiwanese speak Japanese, and have friends in Japan. Through these ties, it should be possible to provide assistance that few other countries can because of language or cultural barriers. I very much hope the people of Taiwan recognize this opportunity and make use of existing contacts to provide help.
We also need to accept that such a disaster can strike any country. Taiwan is particularly vulnerable because it sits on the same fault line as Japan. In other words, the same thing could happen to Taiwan. That is exactly why it would be good to review the nation’s disaster preparedness, especially for situations where more than one disaster strikes at the same time.
The situation in Japan is becoming more critical by the day because of a third related problem: the crippling of the nuclear power plants at Fukushima. If the problems there are not contained, this has the making of an even larger disaster.
This is an area where Taiwan is just as vulnerable as Japan, if not more so. It has three nuclear power plants in operation: Jinsan and Guosheng in the north, and Ma-anshan in the south, each with two nuclear reactors which are of the same type or even older than the ones in Japan. The fourth set of reactors, in Gongliao District (貢寮) of New Taipei City (新北市), is expected to be completed next year.
Aside from the older technology, these plants are all situated on the coast, and the question is whether they would be able to withstand an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami. Such an analysis needs to be done and done in a transparent fashion, to reassure the public.
For the long-term, it is also necessary to reassess energy policy, particularly in countries that are now heavily dependent on nuclear and fossil fuel energy.
However, back to my original point: We need to help Japan to weather this crisis. That requires a large-scale effort on the part of both the government and the public. This can be done in a variety of ways — by sending more relief teams, aid, blankets, tents, etc. However, we can also help in smaller ways by reaching out to our Japanese friends and demonstrating that we care. That’s what good neighbors are all about.
Nat Bellocchi is a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and a special adviser to the Liberty Times Group. The views expressed in this article are his own.
World leaders are preparing themselves for a second Donald Trump presidency. Some leaders know more or less where he stands: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows that a difficult negotiation process is about to be forced on his country, and the leaders of NATO countries would be well aware of being complacent about US military support with Trump in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be feeling relief as the constraints placed on him by the US President Joe Biden administration would finally be released. However, for President William Lai (賴清德) the calculation is not simple. Trump has surrounded himself
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
On Friday last week, tens of thousands of young Chinese took part in a bike ride overnight from Henan Province’s Zhengzhou (鄭州) to the historical city of Kaifeng in search of breakfast. The night ride became a viral craze after four female university students in June chronicled their ride on social media from Zhengzhou in search of soup dumplings in Kaifeng. Propelled by the slogan “youth is priceless,” the number of nocturnal riders surged to about 100,000 on Friday last week. The main road connecting the two cities was crammed with cyclists as police tried to maintain order. That sparked
RSS