Since the SARS virus first spread to this country there have been many bizarre stories that appear to indicate that an alarmingly high degree of selfishness is considered normal in this society.
There was Taipei County businessman Li You-cheng (
There are stories of businesspeople hoarding face masks as well as a drugstore on Taipei's Tihua Street that was reportedly selling N-95 masks for NT$700, about 10 times their normal price. Now vendors are selling masks everywhere in Taipei at double the normal price -- an indication that the mask shortage is due to hoarding by unscrupulous people.
In the face of such indifference to the wellbeing of others, why should healthcare workers be willing to risk their lives in the fight against SARS without support and cooperation from the general public?
The SARS epidemic is like a magic mirror that exposes demons in their true forms. It has revealed the black holes in the nation's healthcare system. It has also highlighted the government's powerlessness in the face of vicious partisan wrangling that has beset politics in this nation for so long. Above all, it has revealed the deplorable state of civic awareness.
The bloated egotism of the Taiwanese cannot be blamed solely on their selective adoption of Western democracy and human-rights concepts. The Taiwan-ese have inherited the Chinese habit of flouting and bending the law and placing themselves and their family above the needs of society.
A huge ego means that many people have no problem demanding the government and healthcare workers wage an all-out war against SARS, while also demanding their individual freedoms not be abridged the slightest bit. Reflected in the SARS mirror, the Taiwanese ideas about democracy and human rights appear shallow. The people have mistaken anarchy for democracy, selfishness for human rights. Hence the high-flown talk about "rights" at every turn couples with an obliviousness about "responsibilities."
The years of political wrangling have led the public to look down on politicians. The obstructionism between political parties has resulted in a weak government that worries more about a possible backlash from the opposition than what's the right thing to do. The people's disgust of politics and their government's weakness in turn contribute to the public's intransigence. People who no longer respect politicians won't respect their policies or their laws.
The fact that Taiwan is superior to China in terms of democratic politics and civic awareness has been part of its justification for trying to rejoin the World Health Organization (WHO). Now that the government is making an all-out effort to win observership in the WHO, the public must not undermine such efforts by their misbehavior.
At this crucial moment, the people of Taiwan should show some moral courage through self-
reflection. Instead of passively resenting the political wrangling that has deadlocked the legislature and damaged the economy they should take action to force politicians to make good on their pledges. They should condemn self-aggrandizing politicians who repeatedly make wild accusations -- or promises -- but fail to back them up. They should stop and consider the impact of their own actions on those of others. Most of all they should cooperate with all public health measures that may be required to curb the spread of SARS.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS