Does US value democracy?
William Lowther’s article on Noah Feldman’s comments (“Professor says Xi signals a ‘respectful’ meeting with Taiwan’s next government,” Nov. 22, page 3) makes one wonder if principle and integrity matter in US policy.
Feldman says nothing about the will of the Taiwanese and instead talks about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) nationalistic aspirations. Is freedom and democracy no longer of particular concern to people like Feldman and Lowther?
If not, then a warning was sent to all US allies in Asia: Do not rely on the US as an ally.
Taiwanese will, sooner or later, vote for independence. If the US believes in democracy and freedom as it says it does, then it should state clearly that it will support the democratically expressed will of Taiwanese, whether that offends the Chinese Communist Party or not.
Gavan Duffy
Australia
Aiming to be ‘frozen garlic’
There are several interesting phenomena in the campaigns for the Jan. 16 presidential and legislative elections.
The three presidential tickets each involve running mates from opposite sexes, showing that women are gaining political power. There are four party chairpersons, two on one ticket; one party is pan-green and three are pan-blue.
All six candidates have doctorates in different fields. Hopefully, the next administration will be wise in its policymaking and friendly when approaching people.
All three tickets use a circle as a part of their logos. Two tickets use “Taiwan” in their slogans and one ticket uses a circle crossed by a square from the left to form a map of Taiwan. Taiwan is a popular name and symbol in elections. None of the three tickets use the “Republic of China (ROC)” or “Chinese Taipei” in their slogans.
Some legislative candidates hide or minimize their party emblem on their campaign brochures. Two parties have similar emblems, but with different sizes.
Whenever there is a campaign rally, all candidates on the stage stand hand-in-hand, and loudly and repeatedly shout candidates’ names and “Dong-suan,” which means “Be elected” in Taiwanese, but is written in Chinese as “凍蒜” which means “frozen garlic.” What a loss in translation.
Thirty years ago, there was a one-party dictatorship. Now there are a dozen parties competing for 113 legislative seats, including 33 legislators-at-large. Some candidates even cry, kneel, kiss the ground or worship in temples for votes.
Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) is a veteran legislative speaker, but has been discriminated against by some leaders of his own party. He was blocked from running for president, but he remains loyal to the party after he was nominated as the No. 1 candidate on the legislator-at-large list. If possible, he wishes to be the speaker again.
There are some unique election terms as well: “Rubbing dough balls to make soup” means paying off a competitor to drop from the race; a “5:5 wave” means a tight race; an election is described as “an election war”; “painting black” means defaming a competitor; “sweeping the street” means campaigning on streets or in public places.
However, when a candidate wins the election, they become “frozen garlic.”
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
Remember to conserve water
As Taiwan is now into the dry season and will probably not have any significant rainfall until the middle of next year, I feel a need to bring to people’s attention the water restrictions we faced earlier this year.
Many cities and townships had severe water restrictions and Kaohsiung was only a day or two from having water cut off for two days a week. This sent people to the local stores to buy large containers to fill with water, which would defeat the purpose of cutting off the water to conserve it.
I pass over the Gaoping River (高屏溪) daily and already I can see that the water level is low and it is only November. Might I ask what the Taiwan Water Corp (台灣自來水), the national government and local governments are doing to promote water conservation?
I see people wasting water, a very precious resource, on a daily basis. I read that cleaning the silt from reservoirs to improve storage capacity is deemed too costly. What cost would the nation incur when we run out of water? Conservation of our resources is something that should be promoted by all of us.
Although about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, only 1 percent of that water is potable. Water is not an infinite resource and unless we start conserving it now, the taps will be running dry very soon.
Nick Pond
Kaohsiung
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
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