“Why not form diplomatic relations?” has long been a catchphrase for people venting their frustration of Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation.
Due to Taiwan’s intensifying and deepening relations with the US, Japan and other nations, skeptics with a sour grapes mentality have resorted to remarks like “why not form diplomatic relations if things are looking great?”
At a public forum where the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) proposed converting land from Taipei Municipal Neihu Junior High School into office space, skeptics called on the US to form diplomatic relations with Taiwan so that it is allowed to lease extra land for office expansion.
This is an extreme dualistic perspective that only assesses the relations of two nations by the establishment of diplomatic relations while dismissing de facto relations. Despite having formal ties, does the US enjoy a better relationship with China than with Taiwan?
In past 12 months, former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan; the US bipartisan congressional delegation to Taiwan led by Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee; and Vice President William Lai’s (賴清德) trip to Japan to offer his condolences in the wake of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s murder have all been diplomatic breakthroughs.
Nonetheless, the skeptics chose to overlook that there is a large gray area between formal and informal diplomatic relations, while turning a blind eye to substantial breakthroughs.
The biggest fallacy of blaming other countries for not forming diplomatic relations with Taiwan is to commit a reverse causality error. If China had not been pressuring other countries, or former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) had not strongly pushed for a “one China” principle by saying that “Gentlemen [Republic of China] cannot coexist with thugs [the Chinese Communist Party]” (漢賊不兩立), Taiwan would not be in such a difficult situation.
The expansion of the AIT’s offices is now twisted as a measure for the US to evacuate its citizens if war ever breaks out between China and Taiwan. This kind of farcical remark remind Vietnamese of the fall of Saigon.
Before the fall of Saigon in April 1975, the US conducted the biggest evacuation in history, where more than 7,000 US civilians and others were evacuated with helicopters from the city.
This April 15, when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined a ceremony to break ground on a US$1.2 billion US embassy compound in Hanoi, Vietnamese were more than happy to welcome the secretary as the construction is expected to take six years, create jobs for about 1,800 local people and contribute US$350 million to Vietnam’s economy.
As nations around the world are seeking closer ties with the US, Taiwan cannot afford to be left behind for the presence of a few anti-US people.
Chen Chang-jih
Taipei City
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
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,
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
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,
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