Taking a long-term perspective is required to make an appropriate assessment of the future development of cross-strait ties and if people took such a view, they would find that Taiwan’s future looks brighter than China’s, a Taiwanese writer based in Japan said yesterday.
“Over the long term, Taiwan would be able to win out over China because of three things: the high level of civilization of its citizens, the maturity of its society and the high incorporation of universal values in society, which is what is known as ‘soft power,’” Ko Bunyu (黃文雄), 74, a Taiwanese-Japanese professor and writer said in Taipei.
The Tokyo-based professor has observed China and Taiwan for five decades and prefers to assess the development of cross-strait relations beyond a political point of view. Ko said Taiwanese should be optimistic rather than pessimistic about Taipei’s relationship with Beijing because “time is on our side, not the other way around.”
Ko is known for supporting Taiwanese independence and being anti-China, as well as playing down Japan’s war crimes during World War II. He has published more than 200 books in Japanese and more than 60 in Chinese.
Born in Kaohsiung in 1938 during Japanese colonial rule, Ko went to Japan to study in 1964 and has stayed in the country ever since, working at Takushoku University as a professor and advocating Taiwanese independence through the World United Formosans for Independence organization.
In a speech titled Contrary Thinking about Taiwan, which he delivered at a lecture organized by Avanguard Publishing, Ko said it was better to examine Taiwan-China relations with a long-term view and from a cultural and social perspective.
Ko cited the evolution of relations between Sri Lanka and India as a good example for Taiwanese to follow when thinking about relations with China, adding that Sri Lanka’s social structure is “somewhat similar to that of Taiwan.”
With regard to the heightened tensions over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) claimed by Taiwan, China and Japan, which calls them the Senkakus, Ko said a local, rather than an all-out, war could break out between Tokyo and Beijing over the territorial spat. However, China’s naval forces would not likely be able to match Japan’s and the Chinese military appears to be split on the issue, with its army and air force opposed to the use of force.
Citing a recent conversation with Japanese academics, Ko said they believed that several countries, such as India, Russia and South Korea, “would be happy to see a Sino-Japanese war” because they could exploit the conflict to their advantage.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS