President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has always bragged about establishing more peaceful and stable cross-strait relations, but his constant concessions to China seem to be pushing Taiwan to suicide, as Beijing has never ceased to demonstrate its territorial ambitions.
Earlier this year, Beijing’s unilateral announcement that it planned to establish a new flight route along the median of the Taiwan Strait — which has long served as the de facto boundary between Taiwan and China — was met with indignation by Taiwanese, as many considered it a provocative move.
Recently, China again asked for the “streamlining” of cross-strait flight routes linking the issue to Chinese tourists making transit stops in Taiwan.
Aside from these actions that show its territorial ambitions for Taiwan, officials in Beijing continuously talk about their goals, even making threats when Taiwanese politicians mention sovereignty.
Earlier this month, China’s ambassador to the US said that Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should not have attended a “job interview” in the US, but instead she should be quizzed by all 1.3 billion Chinese if she wants to become the leader of Taiwan.
China’s recent actions have even alarmed some officials in the government, despite its pro-China policies.
On Friday at a ceremony to promote several high-ranking military officers, Minister of National Defense Kao Kuang-chi (高廣圻) warned of the threat posed by China’s increasing military and espionage activities. However, at the same event, Ma only talked about the need to improve discipline in the armed forces, as if the threat posed by China were irrelevant.
On the same day, when meeting with female lawmakers from other Asian nations, Ma said that cross-strait economic exchanges with China should be encouraged so that the two sides could work together to boost their economies, adding that this is the only way to prevent a war between Taiwan and China.
Nobody wants to see their nation at war, but that does not mean that war should be prevented through surrender. Of course, capitulation would stop a war before it even started, but the people of the defeated nation might face more suffering than would have been caused by war.
The actions of Ma’s administration might remind some of the story of Faust, who traded his soul to the devil in order to gain unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures, condemning himself to eternal damnation. This is pretty much what Ma’s administration has been doing: Ma made a deal with the devil — Beijing in this case — for short-term peace, stability and prosperity, and has been willing to make all sorts of compromises in return.
However, in the end, when Taiwan is completely dependent on China economically and politically, Beijing will not hesitate to take what it wants, possibly damning all Taiwanese.
Faust was saved from eternal damnation by God’s grace. The people of Taiwan will have to make their own grace to save themselves from inevitable suffering.
Fortunately, Taiwan is a democracy, and the people have a chance to save themselves.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS