A real Taiwanese hero
In a recent front page article, it was reported that Dharma Master Cheng Yen (證嚴法師), founder of the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, had been named as one of this year’s 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine (“Tzu Chi founder among 100 ‘most influential’: ‘Time’ April 23, page 1).
Readers of this newspaper might be unaware that due to a congenital heart problem, the 73-year-old nun has long been told by her doctors not to fly in airplanes. As a result, she never travels overseas to visit disaster areas or meet with people in such places and she travels only by car, bus or train in Taiwan.
However, Cheng’s love for the world reaches the four corners of the globe through the hands of millions of Tzu Chi volunteers. Although she will not be able to fly to New York to attend the Time 100 Gala for this year’s honorees next month, her spirit will be there for sure.
ARRON BECK
Pingtung
Tell the financial truth
While front-page items in the Taipei Times, China Post and Chinese-language newspapers concentrate on judicial rulings, defense issues, the proposed petrochemical plant in Changhua County and, of course, the ongoing political soap opera within the Democratic Progressive Party in the run up to next year’s election, there is a scarcely noticed, but nonetheless important shadow issue, which, if it is reported on at all, tends to appear only in the pages of the business section and just once in my letter published three years ago (Letters, Feb. 23, 2009, page 8).
That issue is the fragility of Taiwan’s monetary system.
A recent business article (“Reform alliance says MOF’s Debt Clock inaccurate,” April 16, page 12) reported on the claim by the Alliance for Fair Tax Reform that, contrary to the Ministry of Finance’s published figure of NT$4.85 trillion (US$168 billion), total government debt is in fact more than four times that at approximately NT$15.7 trillion — or just under NT$1 million man, woman and child in the nation.
If that figure is correct, then the potential implications for long-term interest rates and consequently the stability of the NT dollar ought to be apparent. The government is effectively bankrupt and with similar situations existing in both the US and China (not to mention Europe) — there is no one to turn to for help.
The next administration — whichever party wins the presidential election — will face a simple choice: Either begin to actively deal with this problem or keep trying to put it off until financial meltdown arrives.
It is in the long-term interest of the nation and a healthy economy that both political parties admit now that this problem exists and stop pretending that economic growth and public spending can be “stimulated” indefinitely.
Any strategy for dealing with this problem must include two broad areas of reform: One is reform of the monetary system with a return to commodity-based currencies of inelastic supply; the other is a systemic policy of privatization to encompass education, healthcare and other social services which, together with administration costs, currently account for more than 60 percent of annual expenditure (or more than NT$1 trillion a year).
Neither of these policies would avert entirely the serious economic consequences Taiwan faces in the future, but they may help to break the fall somewhat, making it easier for the 23 million Taiwanese to cope with the fallout.
MICHAEL FAGAN
Tainan
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
RSS