KMT-CCP alignment
In addition to plans to “re-educate” Taiwanese, Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shaye (盧沙野) had two other familiar talking points in his interview on France’s BFM TV.
Familiar because they were also raised by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) in an interview with Deutsche Welle in March.
First, Lu (and Hung) grieved that support for unification with China had dropped drastically in Taiwan over the past 20 years. They attributed this not to the end of the KMT’s authoritarian rule, and Taiwan’s home-grown and hard-fought democratization, but to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) “propaganda.”
Second, Lu lamented that the DPP uses “extremist propaganda” to “oppress” the KMT.
Hung, who recently visited “re-education camps” in China’s Xinjiang, must be pleased that her party has found an advocate in its erstwhile sworn rival, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an advocate that shares her contempt of the intelligence of Taiwanese voters, that is willing to air the KMT’s grievances on French television and even go as far as firing missiles over Taiwan to make a point.
Te Khai-su
Helsinki, Finland
World leaders are preparing themselves for a second Donald Trump presidency. Some leaders know more or less where he stands: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows that a difficult negotiation process is about to be forced on his country, and the leaders of NATO countries would be well aware of being complacent about US military support with Trump in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be feeling relief as the constraints placed on him by the US President Joe Biden administration would finally be released. However, for President William Lai (賴清德) the calculation is not simple. Trump has surrounded himself
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
On Friday last week, tens of thousands of young Chinese took part in a bike ride overnight from Henan Province’s Zhengzhou (鄭州) to the historical city of Kaifeng in search of breakfast. The night ride became a viral craze after four female university students in June chronicled their ride on social media from Zhengzhou in search of soup dumplings in Kaifeng. Propelled by the slogan “youth is priceless,” the number of nocturnal riders surged to about 100,000 on Friday last week. The main road connecting the two cities was crammed with cyclists as police tried to maintain order. That sparked
RSS