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
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
Taiwanese pragmatism has long been praised when it comes to addressing Chinese attempts to erase Taiwan from the international stage. “Taipei” and the even more inaccurate and degrading “Chinese Taipei,” imposed titles required to participate in international events, are loathed by Taiwanese. That is why there was huge applause in Taiwan when Japanese public broadcaster NHK referred to the Taiwanese Olympic team as “Taiwan,” instead of “Chinese Taipei” during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. What is standard protocol for most nations — calling a national team by the name their country is commonly known by — is impossible for
India is not China, and many of its residents fear it never will be. It is hard to imagine a future in which the subcontinent’s manufacturing dominates the world, its foreign investment shapes nations’ destinies, and the challenge of its economic system forces the West to reshape its own policies and principles. However, that is, apparently, what the US administration fears. Speaking in New Delhi last week, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau warned that “we will not make the same mistakes with India that we did with China 20 years ago.” Although he claimed the recently agreed framework
RSS