Would the US be prepared to risk a catastrophic war with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to protect the Republic of China, better known as Taiwan? US President Joe Biden laid out his vision clearly last month. He sees the rivalry between the PRC and the US as a global conflict between democracy and autocracy, and Taiwan is unquestionably one of Asia’s most successful democracies. In 1954, then-US president Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened to use nuclear weapons after China shelled a rocky islet near Taiwan’s coast, when the country was still a military dictatorship. Things were different then. The US was treaty-bound to defend Taiwan. This changed after 1972, when US president Richard Nixon agreed that Taiwan was part of “one China,” and US president Jimmy Carter nullified the defense treaty in 1979. Whether the US would still fight a war over Taiwan has become a question subject to what former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger long ago termed “strategic ambiguity.” As a result, US military commitments in the East China Sea are peculiar. A defense treaty with Japan obliges the US to defend a few uninhabited rocks called the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known as the Senkakus in Japan, but not democratic Taiwan and its 23 million people. There are practical reasons why a Chinese military attack on Taiwan might still provoke a war with the US. China’s control of the East China Sea would be a threat to Japan and South Korea. Allowing that to happen could start a dangerous nuclear arms race in East Asia. Taiwan also has highly advanced computer technology, which the US and its democratic allies would prefer not to see in the PRC’s hands. Then there is the long hand of history. We are not determined by the past, but we ignore it at our peril. While
“Hey, I’ve seen you before,” an elderly gent yelled. I was hiking past him on Bishanyan in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) and decided to stop and say hello. It turned out he thought I was someone else, someone almost a foot shorter than I and also not bald, but why get bogged down in details? We had a nice, albeit strange, chat; he provided intimate details — details I neither asked for nor wanted to know — about how he did not feel his age. Anyway, it was entertaining, and these surprising, random and overwhelmingly positive moments are regular experiences on Taipei’s hiking trails. Whether it is solo hikers playing music out of loudspeakers for all the world to hear, middle-aged men yelling: “Hoooo” as loud as they can for no apparent reason, or just folks stopping you to overshare personal information, people — and the noise they make — are a big part of almost any hike you go on in the Taipei area. This point has been made before in this newspaper, but where the writer of that other article found frustration, I generally only find pleasure (“A-holes on Taiwan’s mountains,” Sept. 3 last year, page 13). I had reason to remember that article recently while I was out on a side trail leading off from the gorgeous Jinmianshan (Goldface Mountain). This peak, the main trailhead of which is near Xihu MRT Station, attracts large numbers of hikers, presumably most of them drawn by the picturesque rocky outcrops at the top of the walk. Out on the side trails, things are a bit quieter, and I was walking in silence until my calm was pierced by the velvet tones of Michael Bolton — a song? When a Man Loves a Woman. It is a classic — of sorts. Everyone knows it, but it is Michael
Taiwan’s pandemic history Historians will consider May 11, 2021, as the day Taiwan was invaded by a wave of new COVID-19 cases — 16 were reported after many months of seven or fewer new cases per day, with none, one or two reported on most days. The end result will depend on how we immediately respond. If we halt the growing carelessness we are witnessing and regain the rigorous attitude and willingness to take action as we did in spring last year, there is a good chance we can stop this wave from getting out of control. However, all levels of government and private citizens would need to work together to make sure that COVID-19 has no place to go, no one to spread to and nowhere to hide while waiting for an opportunity to re-emerge. If we act like unconcerned individuals, doing our own thing and disobeying the orders of the Central Epidemic Command Center, we might end up sacrificing the health of others to satisfy our own selfish desires. We must make the necessary changes in our behavior today to avoid outcomes that are being reported daily in India and several Southeast Asian countries. We also want to stay away from the problems that Americans suffered from November last year to March due to a lack of leadership. To fight the new wave, whose origins and variant type are still being determined, we need to redouble our efforts to wear masks, maintain social distancing and reduce social activities — the basic weapons we used before to get the kind of success that received praise from around the world. Are you planning a holiday? Go to the countryside and breathe fresh air rather than visit crowded, enclosed spaces with poor air circulation, such as department stores, hypermarkets, movie theaters and KTVs. I hope that when the story
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Late last month, an “unknown hill in the Chinese desert” was blanketed in scores of large red and white banners, flapping vitriol in the breeze. “I hope you die, bitch,” one said. “Little bitch, screw the feminists,” others said. They were all actual messages sent to women, an act of harassment anonymized by social media. They were sent during weeks of intense debate about the treatment of women on Chinese microblogging sites, sparked by the abuse of Xiao Meili (肖美麗), who posted video of a man who threw hot liquid at her after she asked him to stop smoking. After collecting more than 1,000 of the abusive messages posted to feminists and feminist groups, a group of young women artists stuck them on a hill, creating a temporary “Internet violence museum.” “When the Xiao Meili incident happened, a lot of feminists were being trolled, including myself,” said one of the artists, Yaqing, who did not want to use her real name. “We wanted to make the trolling words into something that could be seen, touched, to materialize the trolling comments and to amplify the abuse of what happens to people online.” Much of the abuse has been driven by a growing nationalistic fervor, with people criticizing or drawing attention to China’s human rights issues becoming targets of major online pile-ons, or worse. Some women who have put themselves in the public eye to draw attention to human rights issues such as the abuses in Xinjiang have been targeted with faked nude photographs, threats, accusations of being traitors, separatists and paid actors, and harassment of family members. The attacks have come from regular citizens online, as well as government officials and state media. “I was lynched in the Chinese media, along with a lot of my peers who study Xinjiang.” Chinese-Australian researcher Vicky Xu (許秀中) told Australian
The WHO should be overhauled and given more authority to investigate global disease threats, according to a review of the international COVID-19 response, which found that a multitude of failures, gaps and delays allowed the coronavirus to mushroom into a pandemic. While stopping short of assigning blame to any particular factor, the report released on Wednesday by an independent panel cochaired by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark linked the severity of the global outbreak to deficiencies across governments, the WHO and other multilateral organizations, and regulations that guide official actions. The panel also called for an agreement to waive vaccine patents, limit terms for WHO leaders, create an oversight body and create a legally binding treaty to bolster the prevention and response to future pandemics. The international system remains unfit to avoid another disease from spiraling into one matching COVID-19, which threatens to cost the world economy US$22 trillion by 2025, the panel said. “The situation we find ourselves in today could have been prevented,” former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the panel’s other cochair, told reporters on Monday. “This was partly due to a failure to learn from the past.” In the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO could have warned countries to assume that SARS-CoV-2 was spreading among people, said the panel, which was established at the request of the WHA, the WHO’s decisionmaking body, a year ago. HAMPERED BY POLITICS The WHO also could have declared much earlier that the outbreak in Wuhan, China, was a public health emergency of international concern — the highest level of global alert. This could have been done by at least Jan. 22 last year, Clark said. The role of the WHO and its director-general have been contentious from the early days of the pandemic, as governments sought to understand how the virus emerged
The government on Monday expressed concern that Taiwanese officials in Hong Kong would be required to return home at the end of the year, as the territory has so far not responded to requests to renew their visas. This is probably for the best, given that the Hong Kong government — likely acting on instructions from Beijing — has demanded that the Taiwanese officials sign documents acknowledging Beijing’s “one China” principle. To do so would effectively cede the Republic of China’s sovereignty claims, which would be counter to President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) policy of not acknowledging the so-called “1992 consensus.” It used to make sense for Taiwan to have representation in Hong Kong and Macau, but China destroyed any illusions of the territories’ autonomy when it forced the National Security Law on Hong Kong in June last year. Even former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) — who typically favors good relations with China — on March 12 said that the “one country, two systems” formula was a “thing of the past,” after Beijing the day before announced plans to overhaul Hong Kong’s electoral system. A representative office in Hong Kong is not strictly necessary, as before 2011 its primary function in issuing visas was handled through the China Travel Service. There were hopes last year that Taiwanese officials in Hong Kong could help dissidents in the territory planning to relocate to Taiwan. However, the arrests of many over the past year — including 12 who were arrested at sea while attempting to reach Taiwan’s shores — show that China will stop at nothing to detain and persecute anyone who defies it. If Taiwanese officials were to communicate with dissidents in Hong Kong, it would serve only to endanger the dissidents and the officials themselves. This is especially true since the passage last month of a
The 74th World Health Assembly (WHA) is to take place from May 24 to June 1. This meeting is crucial, as several countries are witnessing a surge in COVID-19 cases. Some Asian countries that successfully kept the virus at bay are once again facing the threat of an outbreak. The deadly second wave ravaging India is a reminder that this pandemic is far from over and complacency should have no place in any countries’ COVID-19 response. Countries are faltering while dealing with the pandemic, and in such a grim situation, what is most important is to work toward finding a collective solution. Unfortunately, despite its impeccable COVID-19 response, Taiwan has been unfairly excluded from the WHA and other high-level discussions. In the past year, Taiwan has demonstrated that it is essential to engage with it, and health cooperation should be an important component in the Indo-Pacific region with Taiwan at its core. Even though it is largely symbolic, Taiwan has lately received immense support for its inclusion in the WHA from countries around the world. On Wednesday last week, G7 foreign ministers issued a joint communique supporting Taiwan’s meaningful participation in WHO forums and the WHA, and on the following day, the French Senate unanimously passed a resolution in support of Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, including the WHO, followed on Friday last week a statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in support of Taiwan’s inclusion in the 74th WHA. No country is safe from COVID-19 until every country is safe, but despite this, Taiwan is excluded. Taiwan’s inclusion is important more than ever as it is witnessing a number of local cases for which the source of infections are yet to be determined. Leaving out Taiwan means leaving it to fend for itself, while completely disregarding the 23 million lives
Taiwan has finally become an ongoing public issue in Canada, due in part to its success in keeping out COVID-19, and the Chinese Communist Party’s successful efforts to offend just about everyone in Canada. Following the lead of right-wing US politicians, Canadian conservative pundits and Canadian Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Chong (莊文浩) of the Conservative Party, politicians are urging Canada to “recognize Taiwan.” There is a small problem here for Canada, which has a different history of relations with Taiwan than the US. For Canada to “recognize” Taiwan as things stand would be to re-recognize the Republic of China (ROC) from which it broke diplomatic ties in 1970. That is still the name of the state on Taiwan, which exists under the 1947 ROC Constitution. Readers in Taiwan do not need an explanation of the complications of this situation (see Taipei Times, “The ROC Constitution: Sense, caution,” May 6, page 8). For Canada to recognize that state would be the end of its relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Why talk about “recognizing” at all? Canada’s “one China” policy already recognizes “Taiwan,” but not the ROC. Canada’s unique “one China” policy exists only because of and for the sake of Taiwan. If in 1970 then-Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau had wished only to serve the commercial interests of calling to “recognize” the PRC, Canada could have just switched recognition with no reference to Taiwan — the same way Britain and France had done, but Trudeau was a leader who acted on principle and had a long view of history. Canada’s Taiwan policy did not begin in 1970. It goes back to the 1950s. In 1955, then-Canadian secretary of state for external affairs Lester B. Pearson told the House of Commons that “certainly, in any decision regarding the future of Formosa
A few days ago, a friend and I watched the movie Listen Before You Sing (聽見歌再唱), which was released last month. In the film, a Bunun elder explains that Bunun sing by ear, so the only way they can sing their unique eight-part polyphony harmoniously is by listening to the voices of the other singers. Bunun might not understand five-line musical notation, and they do not emphasize accuracy of pitch in singing, so there is no question of singing in or out of tune, but only of where it is best for each singer to stand, the elder says. So, “when Bunun people sing, they can be accurate together or inaccurate together, but singing inaccurately together can also sound good,” the elder says. This film helped me to understand the listening spirit of Bunun culture, but it also made me ashamed about my shallow understanding of Aborigines. Although 21st-century Taiwan is a nation where numerous ethnic groups live and interact, and where democracy has struck deep roots, Taiwan still has some niches where discrimination against Aborigines or “new residents” — immigrants who have settled in the past few decades — still exists, be it based on class or other prejudices. Notably, the majority ethnic Han people’s knowledge and understanding of Aborigines is quite shallow and limited, and cultural barriers between ethnic groups remain in place. Consequently, laws and regulations have always been formulated according to Han culture and ideology, while ignoring the cultural differences that exist between Taiwan’s various ethnic groups, and the general public still views Aboriginal communities from a Han-centric perspective. In the film, Bunun schoolgirls perform the Bunun song Mama (媽媽頌, known as Cina in Bunun) and the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) song My Precious Baby (心肝寶貝). These songs, which both extol the love between mother and child, brought tears to my
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With a well-paying job in one of China’s wealthiest cities, Chen Xiaoyu decided it was time to get married this year. However, starting a family is not on her agenda. “If possible, I would want to get sterilized,” said Chen, 29, who works at a hospital office in Shanghai. “The financial pressure is unimaginable. I just couldn’t afford the cost of raising a child on top of housing loans.” China’s once-in-a-decade census, released on Tuesday, shows that amid the uncertainties of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of births nationwide has fallen to the lowest level since 1961, when the country was struggling following a nationwide famine that killed tens of millions of people. The views of women such as Chen — and the experiences of other North Asian economies, such as Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong — suggest there is little prospect of changing that trend. As a result, China’s total population could peak in the next few years, spurring profound changes for the world’s second-largest economy. To ensure that economic growth does not slow along with the population drag, the government in Beijing will need to undertake a challenging shift in its growth model, rapidly increasing spending on pensions and healthcare while maintaining a high level of corporate and state investment in order to upgrade its vast industrial sector. A successful transition would mean that China could become the world’s largest economy, continuing to propel global demand for commodities in the coming decades, while its aging consumers become a vast market for multinationals, with their huge pool of pension savings targeted by global financial companies. A failed response could mean China never eclipses the US, or does so only fleetingly. “They have been plotting their whole growth strategy to be congruent with demographic change,” said Lauren Johnston, a China economics and demography expert
After a decade of reinvention, the British Labour Party has again fallen short electorally. Thursday last week’s dramatic loss in Hartlepool and in councils across the country has raised the perennial question for parties on the left: “What is to be done?” Much of the discussion of Labour’s woes concentrates on British particularities, its Brexit strategy and the relative merits of the reinventions under former party leaders Tony Blair and Jeremy Corbyn. However, the dilemmas Labour faces are far from particular. The past decade has not been kind to social democratic parties across Europe, as the center-left parties that dominated European politics for the second half of the 20th century have suffered a string of losses. In France, the Parti Socialiste fell to under 8 percent of the vote in the most recent legislative elections, with no sign of recovery. In 2017, the German Social Democratic Party experienced its worst postwar performance, a showing likely to worsen in September’s election. Even where social democrats are in power, their position is tenuous. The Swedish Social Democrats, the most electorally successful socialist party in Europe, struggled to form a government after the 2018 election. Too often, the debate about the failures of the left focuses on the past, asking why social democrats have lost traditional working-class voters. This kind of argument claims that social democrats have forgotten their base because they “lost their way” — moving too far to the left on new “woke” social issues, while also moving too far to the right on economic issues. This perspective is at least incomplete and often misleading. Deep changes in Europe’s class structure mean that the appeals of the social democratic heyday are increasingly electorally limited. As recently as the 1980s, many children left school without a qualification, fewer than half of women worked outside of the
As the nation’s health officials and medical professionals strain every sinew to curb a sudden surge of COVID-19 cluster infections — the most serious outbreak of the disease experienced by Taiwan to date — the public is for the most part staying calm and behaving responsibly. That cannot be said for some of the nation’s politicians. The most egregious example is Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Alex Fai (費鴻泰), who on Monday told a news conference that Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) should be executed by firing squad. Taiwan’s legislature is world-famous for its boisterous debating style, which often descends into scuffles, juvenile stunts and even chair throwing — but for a lawmaker to call for a minister’s execution surely marks a new low. Fai’s outburst betrays a man whose mindset is still stuck in the Martial Law era, when KMT apparatchiks regularly had dissidents bumped off. Old habits die hard. While Taiwan long ago threw off the shackles of the KMT’s authoritarian party-state, there still exists an undercurrent of fanatical “deep blue,” pro-authoritarian head-bangers who might be motivated by Fai’s words to do something stupid. In 1170, English King Henry II famously uttered the words: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Interpreting the words as an order, four knights rode to Canterbury Cathedral and murdered the then-archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket. Loose language has consequences: Fai should be investigated for a possible breach of legislative standards. Fai’s outburst also reflects an ingrained blame culture within contemporary politics — certainly not limited to Taiwan — that seeks out easy scapegoats on which to pin the blame for anything that goes wrong in society. The government has been widely praised for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, both domestically and abroad. Chen and his team at the Central
During a commissioning ceremony on Friday last week at the Yulin Naval Base in China’s Hainan Province, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy unveiled three new vessels, coinciding with the 72nd anniversary of the navy’s founding. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who also heads the powerful Chinese Central Military Commission, attended the ceremony, presenting the navy’s ensign and formally naming the ships. The vessels were a new Type 075 Yushen-class landing helicopter dock (LHD) amphibious assault ship, a Type 055 Renhai-class guided-missile destroyer and a Type 094 Jin-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. The Type 075 LHD heralds a root-and-branch change to the navy’s model for conducting landing operations. With China’s intent to launch an invasion of Taiwan growing almost by the day, the Taiwanese military must remain vigilant and develop plans to address the enemy’s tactics. Construction of the Type 075 LHD began in 2018 at Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Co, which has been commissioned to build two more vessels of the type and deliver a new boat every eight months. The staggered manufacturing schedule means that as the second boat is undergoing sea trials, the third vessel would have left the dry dock and be undergoing a final fit-out. Since 2018, the PLA’s Southern Theater Command has been carrying out annual “blue-water joint training formation” exercises. This year’s exercise in March involved PLA Navy troops carrying out beach landing exercises at Pattle Island (Shanhu Island, 珊瑚島) in the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島). Z-8 heavy transport helicopters took part in a 360° over-the-horizon amphibious assault, with marines rappelling from the helicopters and fast Type 726 air-cushioned landing craft simultaneously assaulting the beach by sea. The Type 075 LHD is to further facilitate this kind of modern amphibious operation. Its deck has landing spots for seven helicopters, aimed at enabling troops to carry out quick landing operations.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, people from all walks of life have cautiously tried to maintain a normal life by working hard to combine disease prevention with normal business operations. The pandemic is having an unprecedented effect on the air transport industry, and crew members working in direct contact with passengers have the highest risk of being infected with COVID-19. Just like medical workers, airline crew are under unimaginable mental stress while they are on duty. To save their business and boost their performance at a time when global demand for air transportation has declined sharply, nations have implemented different quarantine measures for airline workers than for regular travelers, but such a flexible approach might not only create loopholes in disease prevention, but also increase the risk of infection among airline workers. There have been many reports of workers in the fishery and shipping industries around the world being infected with the virus, and such matters are indeed regretabble. Over the past few weeks, airline workers in Taiwan have been infected with COVID-19, and this has resulted in an increased risk of community spread. This is something that those infected do not want to see happen, but the heightened risk possibly stems from the flexible quarantine measures put in place by the government and the air transport industry due to business considerations. If Taiwan adopts regular quarantine measures for the air transport industry, its business could go from bad to worse. Nonetheless, the government should propose a quarantine strategy that is better able to protect workers in the airline industry. As the authority in charge of disease prevention, the Central Epidemic Command Center should vaccinate as soon as possible all workers in the air transport industry, even if the effectiveness of the vaccine remains uncertain. The government could consider including special
Dear students of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), Your school administration has in effect disabled, if not permanently closed, the student government. Bound by the National Security Law, you cannot express your anger publicly. Your school’s alumni have urged Academia Sinica to remove the title of academician from your school president and vice chancellor Zhang Xiang (張翔). I am writing this letter to express my support and respect, as a member of Academia Sinica’s faculty, the parent of a National Taiwan University (NTU) student and a former university student who participated in the student movement. Many of my colleagues at Academia Sinica share my position. First of all, your request is right. It is a great shame for Academia Sinica to have a university vice chancellor who persecutes his own students as an academician. Asking to annul his academician’s title is therefore entirely justified. It is just, as was Wolfson College of the University of Cambridge in the UK taking away the fellowship of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) for undermining the territory’s democracy and persecuting its citizens. More importantly, Zhang is not qualified to be the vice chancellor of HKU. Acting as the head of an academic institution is certainly not an easy task, particularly in resisting external political and social pressure. However, the difficulty is one thing, while it is another thing to become a full accomplice of a totalitarian regime, even worse, to be an aggressor against his own students. Instead of protecting his students, Zhang cooperated with the shameful government of Hong Kong in condemning and arresting brave students. He has now effectively disabled the self-governing organization of students. He has eliminated freedom of thought and university autonomy. Backed by the Chinese regime, Zhang is secure in his position. I suggest that you write to the US
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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has opened a new front in its long, ambitious war to shape global public opinion: Western social media. Liu Xiaoming (劉曉明), who recently stepped down as China’s ambassador to the UK, is one of the party’s most successful foot soldiers on this evolving online battlefield. He joined Twitter in October 2019, as scores of Chinese diplomats surged onto Twitter and Facebook, which are banned in China. Since then, Liu has deftly elevated his public profile, gaining more than 119,000 followers as he transformed himself into an exemplar of China’s new sharp-edged “wolf warrior” diplomacy, a term borrowed from the title of a top-grossing Chinese action movie. “As I see it, there are so-called ‘wolf warriors’ because there are ‘wolves’ in the world and you need warriors to fight them,” Liu, who is now China’s Special Representative on Korean Peninsula Affairs, wrote on Twitter in February. His stream of posts — principled and gutsy ripostes to Western anti-Chinese bias to his fans, but aggressive bombast to his detractors — were retweeted more than 43,000 times from June last year through February alone. However, much of the popular support Liu and many of his colleagues seem to enjoy on Twitter has in fact been manufactured. A seven-month investigation by The Associated Press (AP) and the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at the University of Oxford, found that China’s rise on Twitter has been powered by an army of fake accounts that have retweeted posts by Chinese diplomats and state media tens of thousands of times, covertly amplifying propaganda that can reach hundreds of millions of people — often without disclosing the fact that the content is Chinese government-sponsored. More than half the retweets Liu got from June last year through January came from accounts that Twitter has suspended for contravening the platform’s rules, which
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