The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have disregarded procedural justice and disguised their attempt at a power grab as legislative reforms, which has sparked a public outcry.
More than 100,000 people, without being mobilized by any political parties or being led by a specific person, gathered outside the Legislative Yuan on Friday last week in opposition to the controversial reform bills.
The protest has been called the Qingniao movement (bluebird movement, 青鳥運動), named after Qingdao E Road (青島東路) where the protest took place. “Qing” means blue and “dao” contains an element meaning “bird” in Chinese. It is the biggest social movement in Taiwan since the Sunflower movement.
Protestors in the Qingniao movement behaved in a peaceful and rational manner.
The movement was organized by the public and encouraged people from all walks of life to speak up for democracy, with young people making up the biggest percentage of the crowd.
So far, KMT and TPP lawmakers have been determined to ignore the protest and disregard transparency in legislative processes to pass the so-called reform bills, which are actually unconstitutional, to expand legislative power.
Even though it does seem as if protesters’ demands are being ignored, there are still options for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Votes are the key to solving these problems.
Therefore, those who participated in the Qingniao movement should not be pessimistic.
Taiwan’s next local elections are to be held in one-and-a-half years, which would allow eligible voters to teach these democracy vandals a lesson.
Taiwanese should first use their voting rights to prevent TPP Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) from ever becoming mayor or county commissioner and remove KMT lawmakers.
Liu Shih-ming is an adjunct associate professor in the Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture at the National Taipei University of Education.
Translated by Hsieh Yi-ching
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS