It is said that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) salutes a portrait of the Republic of China’s founding father, SunYat-sen (孫逸仙), every day on entering the Presidential Office Building.
Recently, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, with a background in a local factional politics, as a way of expressing her loyalty to the party, directed the premier and the legislative speaker in a bow to Sun’s portrait during a question-and-answer session at the Legislative Yuan.
The KMT is a freak of a political party that specializes in going against public opinion. It seized national assets and then converted them into party assets. Now that the public wants to pursue the KMT over its ill-gotten gains, it is secretly selling them off and refusing to return them to the nation. And yet, rather ironically, the party is attempting to force down the throats of Taiwanese its one and only legitimate asset: Sun and his “last will and testament.”
In his last will and testament, Sun refers to two groups of people: “comrades” and “the people.” The testament was intended as a warning to his “comrades” in the KMT; Sun did not leave it as instructions for “the people” about what would come next. This is an undeniable asset to the party, yet the KMT has sought to nationalize Sun and force him and the worship of him upon Taiwanese.
Apart from “Retake the mainland, free our countrymen,” the most frightening political slogan found in government organizations and school assembly halls during the Martial Law era was: “The revolution is not complete, comrades must continue the hard work.”
Even schoolchildren were submitted to the KMT’s brainwashing and had to recite the “father of the nation’s last will and testament” like monks reciting Buddhist incantations.
There is only a three-word phrase in Sun’s last will and testament that is still relevant to Taiwan today: “Awaken the people.”
During the final years of the Qing Dynasty, the revolutionary organization that Sun brought together called on the people to wake up and overthrow the “alien Manchurian Qing rulers” of China.
Prior to the lifting of martial law, the KMT used brainwashing techniques and obscurantist policies to keep the masses ignorant and maintain their grip on power. The KMT made use of the education system and the media, all of which belonged to the party. It wanted to keep Taiwanese in a comatose state from which they would never awake. Those who followed their conscience and spoke out were branded “dissidents” by the KMT and were jailed or forced to go into exile.
The nation’s democratization broke the KMT’s stranglehold on power, but it relied on buying off local groups with party money to maintain their hold on political power while refusing to reform.
Instead, it is the Democratic Progressive Party, together with the participants of the Sunflower movement, that has lead a defiant revolution and had the most outstanding success in “awakening the people” and defeating the corrupt KMT.
The old and decrepit KMT only knows how to ritualistically bow in front of Sun’s portrait. What the party fails to understand is that the “father of the nation’s last will and testament” has turned into a spell from which it cannot break free.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Edward Jones
Two weeks ago, Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) raised hackles in Taiwan by posting to her 2.6 million Instagram followers that she was visiting “Taipei, China.” Yeoh’s post continues a long-standing trend of Chinese propaganda that spreads disinformation about Taiwan’s political status and geography, aimed at deceiving the world into supporting its illegitimate claims to Taiwan, which is not and has never been part of China. Taiwan must respond to this blatant act of cognitive warfare. Failure to respond merely cedes ground to China to continue its efforts to conquer Taiwan in the global consciousness to justify an invasion. Taiwan’s government
“If you do not work in semiconductors, you are nothing in this country.” That is what an 18-year-old told me after my speech at the Kaohsiung International Youth Forum. It was a heartbreaking comment — one that highlights how Taiwan ignores the potential of the creative industry and the soft power that it generates. We all know what an Asian nation can achieve in that field. Japan led the way decades ago. South Korea followed with the enormous success of “hallyu” — also known as the Korean wave, referring to the global rise and spread of South Korean culture. Now Thailand
This month’s news that Taiwan ranks as Asia’s happiest place according to this year’s World Happiness Report deserves both celebration and reflection. Moving up from 31st to 27th globally and surpassing Singapore as Asia’s happiness leader is gratifying, but the true significance lies deeper than these statistics. As a society at the crossroads of Eastern tradition and Western influence, Taiwan embodies a distinctive approach to happiness worth examining more closely. The report highlights Taiwan’s exceptional habit of sharing meals — 10.1 shared meals out of 14 weekly opportunities, ranking eighth globally. This practice is not merely about food, but represents something more
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1