Eurozone crisis
I wish to comment on a recent article in the Taipei Times on the eurozone crisis (“Perng offers suggestions for handling eurozone crisis,” Oct. 6, page 11).
While I do agree that the eurozone urgently needs a common economic government to handle the crisis, let us not forget that the present eurozone crisis is more than just a sovereign debt crisis. It is also a currency crisis and a banking crisis, the complexity of which has bred confusion and has political consequences.
The EU’s various member states have formed widely different views and their policies reflect these rather than their true national interests. The clash of perceptions carries the seeds of serious political conflicts.
Given differences in economic growth and development, politics, banking systems, public debt management and so on, the euro was an incomplete currency to begin with. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 established a monetary union without a political union. The euro boasted a common central bank without a common treasury so that when it comes to sovereign credit, each member country is on its own. It was exactly this lack of sovereign backing that was missing and obscured until the European Central Bank’s recent willingness to accept member state’s sovereign debts as riskless and on equal terms at its discount window. That is why the euro has become the focal point of the current crisis.
The European banking system has not been properly cleansed since the 2008 financial crisis. Bad assets have not been marked to market, but are being held to maturity. When markets started to doubt the creditworthiness of sovereign debt, it was really the solvency of the banking system that was being questioned, since they were loaded with the bonds of the weaker countries that are now selling below par.
The fact that the Maastricht Treaty criteria were so massively violated shows that the euro has deficiencies that need to be corrected.
What is most urgently needed now is a political union that will form a coalition government for the entire EU. The question is how and which political party or parties within the EU are prepared to form a coalition government. However, with each political entity in the respective member countries holding different political views instead of prioritizing national interest, it seems that there is still a long way to go before an EU coalition government can be formed.
Andrew Michael Teo
Singapore
Nuclear power fallout
It is indeed socially significant and environmentally justifiable for tens of thousands of Japanese to march in central Tokyo to call on Japan’s government to abandon atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster (“Japanese protest nuclear power,” Sept. 20, page 1).
Over recent decades, nuclear power has been regarded by many as an efficient way to generate energy and many countries have built nuclear reactors for this very reason. However, why have people in Japan now protested violently against nuclear power?
The answer is because if a nuclear crisis is to arise, it would cause the extinction of all creatures. We should learn a lesson from modern history.
The worst nuclear accident was the Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986, which caused mass evacuations, long-term health problems and agricultural and economic distress. It was a disaster that affected not just the Ukraine and Russia, but the whole world. A large amount of radioactive material was released into the atmosphere. There are many reports concerning the number of people that have suffered from various illnesses because of exposure to nuclear radiation. Now, more than 20 years later, many areas around Chernobyl are still uninhabitable.
In March, after the devastating earthquake and resulting tsunami hit Japan, sparking that country’s nuclear energy crisis, there were fears about the long-term impact of radiation leaked from the Fukushima power plant. Tens of thousands of people called on Japan’s government to abandon atomic energy as a result, saying that they wanted the future to be safe for their children and grandchildren.
In spite of the fact that new technology can make nuclear power plants safer than ever, there is still the serious problem of what to do with radioactive waste, thus it is essential that we find affordable and workable alternative sources of energy. By employing state-of-the-art technology, we should be able to find alternative ways of generating energy to develop an industry that would have a low environmental impact. Protests by Japanese against nuclear power plants have resonated with people worldwide, as it should with Taiwanese as well.
Wendy Shin
Taipei
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