Open letter on education
On Sunday, the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) — a Taiwanese-American grassroots organization with 54 chapters across the US — expressed its deep concerns about the handling of the student protests against amendments of history textbooks by the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
The problem stems from the fact that during the past two years, Ma’s administration has been preparing changes to the curriculum guidelines that turn the clock back to the days of the repressive Martial Law period (1949-1987), when the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — which came over from China in 1949 — imposed its version of history on the people of Taiwan, emphasizing a Sino-centric view, and glorifying the Chinese Nationalist perspective.
After Taiwan’s momentous transition to democracy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the governments of presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) were able to bring about a change to a more Taiwan-centric perspective, emphasizing Taiwan’s own rich history, geography and culture. The amendments currently being proposed and implemented by the Ma administration are designed to shift the focus back to an anachronistic perspective based on the outdated worldview of the KMT old-guard ideologues and whitewashing the authoritarian period.
During the past few months there has been an increasing groundswell of protests against the proposed amendments — which presumably went into effect on Saturday. Teachers of history, as well as students at high schools and universities, have voiced strong opposition against the changes and have urged the Ministry of Education to rescind the proposed amendments. To no avail: The ministry has persisted in moving forward.
After a series of fruitless meetings between ministry officials and leaders of student organizations, a number of high-school activists briefly occupied the ministry on July 23. As a result, 33 people were arrested and detained for a day, including 20-year-old student leader Dai Lin (林冠華). On Thursday, Lin tragically committed suicide in protest against the lack of responsiveness and harsh treatment they received.
As an overseas organization of Taiwanese-Americans we fully support the student protests. The young generations in Taiwan — along with all the people in Taiwan — have a right to an unvarnished history that presents the facts. The country needs to get away from the biased and self-serving accounts of a repressive KMT regime. Taiwan can be proud of its rich and multi-cultured history. The young protesters are right to stand up to this imposition of a false and flawed account of the course of history.
FAPA urges the government of President Ma Ying-jeou to:
‧ immediately rescind the proposed changes, drop any legal charges against arrested students and take responsibility for the death of Lin;
‧ establish a truly bipartisan group of experts in the field of history and allow them to draw factual outlines for history texts;
‧ in the meantime, continue the use of current textbooks without making use of any of the proposed amendments.
Formosan Association for Public Affairs
Washington
Re-engineering history
When I came to China from the UK many years ago, I was horribly ignorant of the history of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as surrounding countries.
I am glad I have learned it as an adult, rather than as an innocent child. In that way, I can use my critical thinking powers and hopefully reach a better judgement than I would have been able to do in school.
History as a subject needs to be re-engineered. When we have the “revisionists,” the slanted nationalistic curricula, the “lies by omission” and the politically incorrect substance, then that is a sad reflection of the state of “education” — in most countries, I fear.
Howard Huxter
China
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
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
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
RSS