No wonder some people are beginning to feel fed up with this presidential election. Just the questions of whether to hold televised debates between the presidential candidates and who is to blame for the inability to hold such debates thus far are enough to generate a real war of words between the pan-green and pan-blue camps.
After the Lunar New Year, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
However, Ma's new-found enthusiasm evidently took not only the enemy -- the pan-green camp -- by surprise, but also people on his own side, which in turn demonstrates a lack of coordination and rapport in the pan-blue campaign team.
Ma rarely speaks in such harsh tones. As if they were hesitating over Ma's new demeanor, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
This phenomenon is even more clearly demonstrated in the current discussions about televised debates. Signs indicate that Ma may not win much appreciation from his own camp for initiating the proposal for televised debates.
It is not hard to imagine that Lien, who is not exactly known as a charismatic and eloquent man, would not enjoy the upper hand in live televised debates. So, if he has reservations about such debates, it is entirely understandable.
According to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) campaign spokesman Wu Nei-jen (
The debate was never held.
This time around, Lien's campaign team acted as if they were clueless about Ma's proposal for the debates. Friday, when asked about the debates, KMT legislative speaker and pan-blue presidential campaign director Wang Jin-pyng (
As for Lien, his sole response on Friday was a brisk "[I] welcome [it]."
The awkwardness of the situation is further highlighted by the discussions over debate topics. Ma asked for debates on the issue of the legality of the national referendum, which was of course welcomed by the ruling DPP, since the national referendum is the core of its campaign platform. Yet, either unwilling to follow Ma's lead or thinking Lien wouldn't win too many brownie points on this issue, other voices from within the pan-blue camp began to say the first round of debates should be about domestic and economic issues.
The truth of the matter is Lien probably won't enjoy an advantage in a debate over such issues either, not with the rising stock market, declining unemployment rate and improving economy.
Perhaps detecting the reservations of the pan-blue camp about the debates, the DPP is pressing hard to hold the debates as soon as possible -- within 10 days. However, the pan-blue camp is again stalling, saying that a survey should be conducted to help the two sides decide the topics for debates and that the debates should not be held until at least 20 days after the DPP has released a white paper on the referendum issue.
It is to be sincerely hoped that this time around the debates can take place.
When 17,000 troops from the US, the Philippines, Australia, Japan, Canada, France and New Zealand spread across the Philippine archipelago for the Balikatan military exercise, running from tomorrow through May 8, the official language would be about interoperability, readiness and regional peace. However, the strategic subtext is becoming harder to ignore: The exercises are increasingly about the military geography around Taiwan. Balikatan has always carried political weight. This year, however, the exercise looks different in ways that matter not only to Manila and Washington, but also to Taipei. What began in 2023 as a shift toward a more serious deterrence posture
Reports about Elon Musk planning his own semiconductor fab have sparked anxiety, with some warning that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) could lose key customers to vertical integration. A closer reading suggests a more measured conclusion: Musk is advancing a strategic vision of in-house chip manufacturing, but remains far from replacing the existing foundry ecosystem. For TSMC, the short-term impact is limited; the medium-term challenge lies in supply diversification and pricing pressure, only in the long term could it evolve into a structural threat. The clearest signal is Musk’s announcement that Tesla and SpaceX plan to develop a fab project dubbed “Terafab”
China’s AI ecosystem has one defining difference from Silicon Valley: It is embrace of open source. While the US’ biggest companies race to build ever more powerful systems and insist only they can control them, Chinese labs have been giving the technology away for free. Open source — making a model available for anyone to use, download and build on — once seemed a niche, nerdy topic that no one besides developers cared about. However, when a new technology is driving trillions of dollars of investments and leading to immense concentrations of power, it offered an antidote. That is part of
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
RSS