On Aug. 23, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) visited Mount Taiwu (太武山) on Kinmen and chanced upon a group of children. He asked them a political question, namely whether they wanted war or peace.
Clearly asked on purpose, Gou’s question is highly inappropriate. Moreover, the question should have been directed at China rather than the residents of this Taiwanese island territory, adjacent to China. After all, it is China that wants to wage a war against Taiwan, not the other way around.
I would also like to ask Gou to imagine a situation: Let us suppose that the Gou family has an evil neighbor who says that the ownership of all the Gou family mansions and possessions belongs to him, while demanding that the Gou family live in harmony with him, and that they should be supervised by him. If the Gou family does not comply, the neighbor would fight against the Gous and beat them up. Will Gou agree with the neighbor’s proposal? Will he shout out, “I love peace, not war!”?
Gou used to say that enhancing Taiwan’s national defense meant provoking China. In that case, would Gou be willing to dismantle the security equipment of his mansions all over the world? Would he lay off all his security staff?
It is worth mentioning that Gou’s father served as a police officer. If, according to Gou’s thinking, peace could only be achieved through the total removal of self-defense, then society would not need any police.
History provides us with a lesson: All the emperors, officials and commoners of the Song Dynasty had hoped for peace, but how did the Song Dynasty end up? How humiliating it must have been for the Northern Song Dynasty to lose its imperial capital in the Jingkang Incident (靖康之恥). During the Naval Battle of Mount Ya (崖山海戰), hundreds of thousands of Southern Song soldiers, officials and civilians committed suicide by jumping into the sea. More recently, those Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) soldiers who surrendered to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Chinese Civil War ended up in misery. What does Gou have to say about this?
Gou only dares to criticize President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡-英文), but not Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平-). When he meets with Xi, he bows and kowtows to him, showing his full-fledged respect. How could this kind of person ever become the president of Taiwan?
Gou should know that the peace-loving Swiss still conduct mandatory military service for all able-bodied male citizens. Although Switzerland is surrounded by friendly democratic countries, no one dares to bully the Swiss. Unlike Switzerland, Taiwan has an evil neighbor next door, just as Ukraine does with Russia. In this sense, Taiwan must enhance its national defense.
For any sovereign and independent country, strengthening one’s national defense is not the same as provoking others. Only Gou and the politicians of the two opposition parties, the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party, conflate the two. Were any of them to become president-elect of Taiwan, would there be any future for Taiwan?
Gou has almost everything he needs to live a comfortable life. However, what he lacks most is the ability to empathize with others. The same goes for the other two opposition parties. They never empathize and put themselves in somebody else’s shoes.
Teng Hon-yuan is a university professor.
Translated by Emma Liu
On Sept. 3 in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out a parade of new weapons in PLA service that threaten Taiwan — some of that Taiwan is addressing with added and new military investments and some of which it cannot, having to rely on the initiative of allies like the United States. The CCP’s goal of replacing US leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized
In an article published by the Harvard Kennedy School, renowned historian of modern China Rana Mitter used a structured question-and-answer format to deepen the understanding of the relationship between Taiwan and China. Mitter highlights the differences between the repressive and authoritarian People’s Republic of China and the vibrant democracy that exists in Taiwan, saying that Taiwan and China “have had an interconnected relationship that has been both close and contentious at times.” However, his description of the history — before and after 1945 — contains significant flaws. First, he writes that “Taiwan was always broadly regarded by the imperial dynasties of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will stop at nothing to weaken Taiwan’s sovereignty, going as far as to create complete falsehoods. That the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never ruled Taiwan is an objective fact. To refute this, Beijing has tried to assert “jurisdiction” over Taiwan, pointing to its military exercises around the nation as “proof.” That is an outright lie: If the PRC had jurisdiction over Taiwan, it could simply have issued decrees. Instead, it needs to perform a show of force around the nation to demonstrate its fantasy. Its actions prove the exact opposite of its assertions. A
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
RSS