On Sunday, about 200,000 people took to the streets in Taipei.
As always, it was a colorful display of political views on a range of current issues. That this is happening is a testimony to Taiwan’s still-vibrant democracy.
At the same time, that it is necessary to go out into the streets means that a lot of people are unhappy with the current state of affairs and want a change in direction. Let us attempt to analyze the situation from an outside perspective and see what steps would be appropriate.
A major socioeconomic element driving the dissatisfaction is the weak economy, coupled with the widening income gap. Workers, students and middle and lower income people in general have seen their incomes decline and costs go up. In particular, housing prices have skyrocketed.
The global economy is sputtering, and this may of course have some effect on Taiwan, but the main issue in the view of many people is the discrepancy between the promises of high economic growth made when the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) went into effect about two years ago and the present reality.
A second major theme driving the people into the streets is the encroachment on Taiwan’s media by major pro-China media and business mogul Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明). I commented on that development only recently (“Want Want monopoly threatens democracy,” Dec. 26, 2012, page 8).
It does appear that this issue is of deep concern to many, but in particular the young people, the students, who have been out in the streets for several months now. However, the government has turned a deaf ear to their pleas, and recently even blocked amendments to media legislation in the Legislative Yuan designed to prevent such monopolies in the media.
A free press is an essential element of a democratic system. Allowing Taiwan’s media to gradually slide into the control of a conglomerate that is so obviously susceptible to pressures from Beijing is not a responsible policy.
This brings me to the third theme of the rally in Taipei on Sunday: support for a national affairs conference designed to bring about a broad-based dialogue on how to move forward on socioeconomic and political issues.
This idea was first proposed by former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in November, when several of these issues were starting to come to a head.
The concept of such a conference is not new to Taiwan. Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) used it very effectively in 1990, when he was preparing for changes in the political system, which led to the major reforms in 1991 and subsequent years. Then, as now, Taiwan was faced with a deep political divide with irreconcilable differences on how to move forward.
At that time, the main issues were parliamentary and constitutional reform, and the June-July 1990 conference eventually led to the retirement of “eternal” legislators who had retained their positions since the late 1940s, and making Taiwan a full democracy in which the legislature and president are elected by the people.
At this time, the main issues causing so many people to rally are enhancing people’s economic well-being, safeguarding democracy and press freedom, and ensuring that people can make their own choice about the country’s future. These are themes that a broad spectrum of political opinion in Taiwan should be able to agree on, so it would be worthwhile to try to bridge the political divide and have a national policy conference to develop a brighter vision for Taiwan and its future.
Nat Bellocchi served as chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan from 1990 through 1995. 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