Broadening our support base
The contrast could not be starker: During Helsinki Design Week, temporary housing built by refugees using a design by Taiwanese architect Hsieh Ying-chun (謝英俊) was opened on Sept. 15. Lawmakers from the Green Party, the Left Alliance and the Swedish People’s Party participated in the event.
Three weeks later, a reception hosted by Taiwan’s diplomatic mission was also attended by lawmakers, but this time from the Center Party, the National Coalition Party and the so-called Finns Party.
While I appreciate the interest in Taiwan from both the liberal-left and the center-right, I am puzzled why there was no overlap: particularly why no one from the left attended the diplomatic reception. Maybe this is too small a sample from which to extrapolate, but it is hardly pure coincidence.
During the Cold War, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government fostered relations with right-wing contacts through the World Anti-Communist League and the International Democrat Union. The KMT saw the political left worldwide as fellow-travelers of communists and treated them with suspicion.
However, Taiwan is no longer under the KMT regime. Instead, it has a new source of legitimacy — that of popular suffrage and electoral democracy. As a vibrant democracy with a strong civil society, Taiwan needs the widest possible support from across the political spectrum globally.
The Taiwanese deserve the sympathy of politicians of all ideological hues who support governance by the ballot box.
Should not the Democratic Progressive Party administration reach out to friends in left-liberal parties, to lay the groundwork for further participation in the international community?
There is certainly interest in Taiwan from such politicians, too: This is evidenced by their participation at Hsieh’s event. They will not shy away from getting involved if Taiwan’s case is skillfully explained to them.
Thankfully, the civil society and Taiwan’s expatriate communities are already steps ahead of the government. Organizations such as the Formosan Association for Public Affairs in North America and Taiwan Corner in Europe have years of networking and lobbying experience ready for Taiwan’s diplomats to tap into.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Premier William Lai (賴清德) simply have to reorient the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and broaden the perspective of the diplomatic service.
Te Khai-su
Helsinki, Finland
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
Eighty-seven percent of Taiwan’s energy supply this year came from burning fossil fuels, with more than 47 percent of that from gas-fired power generation. The figures attracted international attention since they were in October published in a Reuters report, which highlighted the fragility and structural challenges of Taiwan’s energy sector, accumulated through long-standing policy choices. The nation’s overreliance on natural gas is proving unstable and inadequate. The rising use of natural gas does not project an image of a Taiwan committed to a green energy transition; rather, it seems that Taiwan is attempting to patch up structural gaps in lieu of
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
The Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office on Monday announced that they would not countersign or promulgate the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) passed by the Legislative Yuan — a first in the nation’s history and the ultimate measure the central government could take to counter what it called an unconstitutional legislation. Since taking office last year, the legislature — dominated by the opposition alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party — has passed or proposed a slew of legislation that has stirred controversy and debate, such as extending
RSS