KMT’s ‘wine’ farce
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative whip Fu Kun-chi’s former chief of staff in Hualien City, Chiang Pang-fa (蔣邦法), said during a recent city council session that “unification with China is inevitable.”
Chiang apparently thinks that China should not be provoked, that Taiwan needs to “behave” and that “one should drink sweet wine in a toast rather than being forced to drink bitter wine as a penalty.”
It is farcical that “China’s little echoes” in the KMT — including Fu — have so little concern about saying Taiwanese should give China “respect.”
Mainstream opinion is that “neither side of the Taiwan Strait is subservient to the other” and that “Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation.” The ratio of those who support joining China is vanishingly small, already a tiny minority of the nation’s populace.
Chiang’s comment that “unification is inevitable” is hogwash.
Taiwan’s democratic freedoms are renowned throughout the world. Nobody is going out of their way to annoy China, but China treats Taiwan as if it were a younger sibling, constantly threatening it.
The euphemism about “drinking sweet wine” shows that Chiang is completely on China’s side and it was a subtle threat against the homeland. He seems to be an accomplice to China’s verbal and military threats, and posturing. What he does not seem to realize is that Taiwan and China are adversaries in terms of political and military affairs, and China is the one that started it.
Chiang grew up in Taiwan, ate Taiwanese rice and was educated here. He won re-election through the democratic mechanism by Taiwanese as a representative of a Taiwanese city. His salary comes from the Taiwanese electorate.
Are there no regulations to punish him for brazenly carrying China’s water, subtly threatening the homeland and trying to sell Taiwanese on “obedience” to China while portraying himself as a benevolent actor while selling Taiwan out?
Tien Fong-wen
New Taipei City
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
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017