Harsh criticism of and strong opposition to Taiwan's planned UN referendum by US officials recently could stir up even more anti-US sentiment in Taiwan, academics said in a seminar yesterday.
"Recent public opinion polls show that US popularity in Taiwan has been decreasing as the latter has been leaning toward China in handling the Taiwan Strait issue," said Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政), a professor of politics at Soochow University, during a seminar organized by the pro-independence Taiwan Thinktank.
"The Americans should pay close attention to this," Lo said, because anti-US sentiment was almost non-existent during the past decades in Taiwan. If the sentiment develops into anti-Americanism, we will probably see a fundamental and structural change in Taiwan-US relations in future, he said.
Tung Li-wen (董立文), deputy executive at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, agreed that the intensity of anti-US sentiment is unprecedented, saying it resulted from the US "actually helping China change the status quo and pressuring Taiwan to kowtow to China."
"The worst-case scenario would be that Taiwan becomes not only an anti-communist country but also anti-US at the same time," Tung said.
Most Taiwanese have the impression that the US has been putting much more pressure on Taiwan than on China by failing to ask it to remove its missiles, improve human rights and stop squeezing Taiwan's international space, Lo said.
People have the impression that Taiwan's democracy, which the US had called for since the end of World War II, was not enough to give it the recognition it deserves internationally, said Chen Wen-hsien (陳文賢), a professor at National Chengchi University.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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