Alive and well? Look again
Dennis Hickey’s piece indicates that he may need to leave Missouri and get a little updating on what has been happening in Taiwan and Asia in the past decades (“ROC is alive and well in Taiwan,” March 21, page 8).
It is questionable that the world will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the revolution that “overthrew the Qing Dynasty and led to the establishment of the Republic of China [ROC].”
Certainly, the 1.3 billion people in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will celebrate on Oct. 1 — the anniversary of the PRC’s establishment — rather than the ROC’s Double Ten National Day on Oct. 10.
Of those people in the PRC, it is doubtful that the Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians care about the PRC or the ROC. They wish for a restoration of their own land. In Taiwan, the ROC government is downplaying any talk of joint celebrations with the PRC. Add to that the fact that many Taiwanese look back knowing that in 1911, their land was a colony of Japan and that the 1911 revolution in China means little to them.
Further, they are knowledgeable that the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which entered into force in 1952, did not give their land to either the PRC or the ROC. If Taiwanese are going to celebrate any year, they may prefer 1987, which they see as the overthrow of the one-party state of the ROC with the lifting of martial law and the end of the White Terror era.
Or they may look to 1996 as the year to celebrate since it is the year that a true democracy finally came to Taiwan. Also, if Hickey was to keep up with recent polls and surveys, he would see that a growing number of people in Taiwan identify themselves as Taiwanese and not Chinese.
They have no desire to be linked to the “mainland area” that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) tries to claim as theirs under the 1947 ROC Constitution. As a matter of fact, they would prefer to jettison that outdated and imposed Constitution and even seek to change the name of their country. It is only the nostalgic waishengren community in Taiwan that cares about 1911, and even then, not all of them necessarily do.
JEROME KEATING
Taipei
Taiwan’s fall would be “a disaster for American interests,” US President Donald Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy Elbridge Colby said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday last week, as he warned of the “dramatic deterioration of military balance” in the western Pacific. The Republic of China (Taiwan) is indeed facing a unique and acute threat from the Chinese Communist Party’s rising military adventurism, which is why Taiwan has been bolstering its defenses. As US Senator Tom Cotton rightly pointed out in the same hearing, “[although] Taiwan’s defense spending is still inadequate ... [it] has been trending upwards
Small and medium enterprises make up the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, yet large corporations such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) play a crucial role in shaping its industrial structure, economic development and global standing. The company reported a record net profit of NT$374.68 billion (US$11.41 billion) for the fourth quarter last year, a 57 percent year-on-year increase, with revenue reaching NT$868.46 billion, a 39 percent increase. Taiwan’s GDP last year was about NT$24.62 trillion, according to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, meaning TSMC’s quarterly revenue alone accounted for about 3.5 percent of Taiwan’s GDP last year, with the company’s
There is nothing the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could do to stop the tsunami-like mass recall campaign. KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) reportedly said the party does not exclude the option of conditionally proposing a no-confidence vote against the premier, which the party later denied. Did an “actuary” like Chu finally come around to thinking it should get tough with the ruling party? The KMT says the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is leading a minority government with only a 40 percent share of the vote. It has said that the DPP is out of touch with the electorate, has proposed a bloated
In an eloquently written piece published on Sunday, French-Taiwanese education and policy consultant Ninon Godefroy presents an interesting take on the Taiwanese character, as viewed from the eyes of an — at least partial — outsider. She muses that the non-assuming and quiet efficiency of a particularly Taiwanese approach to life and work is behind the global success stories of two very different Taiwanese institutions: Din Tai Fung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). Godefroy said that it is this “humble” approach that endears the nation to visitors, over and above any big ticket attractions that other countries may have
RSS