Last month, Hon Hai Group chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) said that arms procurement should not involve buying weaponry “just for the sake of it” and that “Taiwan should stop purchasing arms from the US.”
The remarks by Gou, who is contesting the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential primary, evoke memories of attempts by the KMT and the People First Party during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration to sabotage purchases of military equipment.
The main slogan the pan-blue camp used at the time was: “Oppose wasteful arms procurement.” It encouraged people to protest, even employing nonsensical slogans such as: “Oppose arms procurement, tackle unemployment,” “oppose arms procurement, help credit card slaves” and “oppose arms procurement, help prevent suicides.”
The administration of then-US president George W. Bush was willing to sell Taiwan three important types of military equipment: eight diesel-electric submarines, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile batteries and Lockheed P-3C Orion aircraft. If the KMT had not blocked that purchase, Taiwan would have received the first submarine in 2013 and the final vessel this year.
When discussing submarines in 2015, then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said that “the US has agreed to sell us submarines, but we have heard nothing in 14 years. It is really too much” — as if he were not aware that the only obstacle to the sale was the reticence of KMT legislators.
Ironically, with Ma in office, the KMT resubmitted a similar arms purchase agreement, selectively proposing less controversial items that would not create a Chinese backlash, but a lot of time had already been wasted.
When Ma boasted that Taiwan had never spent more money on arms purchases from the US, he did not mention that he was benefiting from the letter of request, with the pricing and availability of weapons the nation needed, submitted by Chen’s administration.
The request for submarines — which are critical for defending the Taiwan Strait frontline — remains up in the air, but when President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office, it launched an indigenous submarine program.
The KMT has long bragged about its special relationship with China, but the party has been too China-friendly in terms of cross-strait relations and too prone to wishful thinking, which has led to unavoidable conflict with its claim to be the protector of the Republic of China.
This is why the party is always questioned and scrutinized when it talks about national defense capabilities and its own determination, regardless of how many superstars, such as Gou or Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), it has on its side.
Gou said on Facebook: “I dare declare peace! I will insist on democracy! I will defend the nation! What about you?”
When did it become necessary to say that you want to protect democracy and Taiwan? These are the most fundamental demands. Apart from hinting at the incongruence between the KMT’s statements and actions, these comments are meaningless.
Chen Kuan-fu is a research student at National Taipei University’s Department of Law.
Translated by Edward Jones and Perry Svensson
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS