Open letter to Obama
To US President Barack Obama,
As the president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a Taiwanese-American grassroots organization that promotes freedom, human rights and democracy in Taiwan, I write to relay to you the concerns of Taiwanese-Americans.
As you prepare to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to the White House, we appeal to you to reaffirm US support for freedom, democracy and human rights in Taiwan.
We understand that the US needs to engage China.
However, such engagement should not come at the expense of US core values — freedom, democracy and human rights.
Taiwanese have developed a vibrant democracy, and the nation is looking forward to presidential and legislative elections in January next year, which will likely see the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gain power.
In the past few months, China has threatened “consequences” if the DPP wins.
We believe this interference in Taiwan’s internal affairs is unwarranted and urge you to prevail on Xi to accept Taiwan as a friendly neighbor and move toward normalized relations with its democratically elected government.
We ask that you remind Xi that it is of core interest to the US that Beijing’s interactions with Taiwan be resolved peacefully and with the express consent of Taiwanese.
We also urge you to refrain from proffering US respect for China’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” as China’s claims to Taiwan’s sovereignty are unjustified.
We ask that you impress upon Xi that Beijing needs to dismantle its 1,600 missiles aimed at Taiwan, and renounce any use of force.
To safeguard Taiwan is to embrace freedom, democracy and human rights.
This is the best way to maintain peace and stability in Asia and is consistent with the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
Finally, it is essential that China end Taiwan’s international political isolation.
This is a peace-loving nation that is able and willing to carry out UN Charter obligations. Taiwan deserves an equal place in the international family of nations, and Taiwanese should be fully represented in international organizations such as the UN and the WHO.
Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you on these matters that are so important to our Taiwanese-American community.
Sincerely yours,
Mark Kao
President, Formosan Association for Public Affairs
Government chips are down
When China unilaterally announced that it was introducing its new integrated-chip “Taiwan compatriot travel document” on Monday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesperson Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) brought out all the cliches, saying that, “compatriots on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are all one big family,” that the new card was meant to “further simplify cross-strait exchanges between compatriots” and that there had been no changes to its functionality.
When Mainland Affairs Council Minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) said that there had not been sufficient talks about the implications of the card, but that the spokesperson’s explanation “removed the doubts that many people have had,” it was clear that Beijing was leading Hsia by the nose.
Incomprehensibly, during a question-and-answer session in the legislature, Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said that he only found out about the announcement when he read it in the newspaper.
He said that China cannot make major unilateral announcements when decisions are pending, adding that Taiwan has not ruled out calling an international press conference to address the issue.
The council said that Beijing gave Taiwan an explanation in June, and that it also informed the council several days ago, but authorities felt they should have been given more detailed information.
Since there was “intelligence information,” why not ask the premier and the president to gain an understanding of that information before they start yapping like dogs?
It seems this administration is completely useless.
Chi An-hsiu
Taipei
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,
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