Lien's bait and switch
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
First, in his debate with President Chen Shui-bian (
However, in my opinion, Lien is sending a message that `"If I am elected as president, I will proceed with unification with communist China," which is the only enemy Taiwan currently has. So after unification,Taiwan will no longer have any imminent enemy -- hence compulsory military service will no longer be needed.
I hope the media and the voters will carefully analyze the hidden motives of a head of state who thinks that Taiwan would not need military power to protect the country's sovereignty.
Second, in an interview with Eastern Television, Lien pledged to donate his salary to charity if he is elected. Lien's gesture is truly laughable. If he is truly concerned about poor people, especially students who could not afford college tuition, he would surely long ago have returned the KMT's vast assets to Taiwan's government and people, to whom they legally belong.
Lien instead hid his party's assets by investing in a trust fund operated by a Swiss bank ("KMT says it'll move its funds to Switzerland", Jan. 23, 2003, page 3). No wonder foreigners have second thoughts about investing in Taiwan because Lien himself has no confidence in his own country.
Third, the KMT announced that it would hold a 313 rally to drum up support and to promote anti-"black gold" and anti-corruption.
This is hypocrisy. The KMT's corruption has been known around the world for decades, and black-gold politics is the party's specialty -- all documented in the history books.
So if Lien or his party is hoping to regain the trust of the people, he should be bold enough to return the party assets, not his future salary, to the people to whom they are long overdue.
Finally, I wish there were a third referendum on the ballot to ask the voters the following: "Should persons who own property outside of Taiwan be allowed to run for president?"
Kris Liao
California
We are used to hearing that whenever something happens, it means Taiwan is about to fall to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) cannot change the color of his socks without China experts claiming it means an invasion is imminent. So, it is no surprise that what happened in Venezuela over the weekend triggered the knee-jerk reaction of saying that Taiwan is next. That is not an opinion on whether US President Donald Trump was right to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the way he did or if it is good for Venezuela and the world. There are other, more qualified
This should be the year in which the democracies, especially those in East Asia, lose their fear of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China principle” plus its nuclear “Cognitive Warfare” coercion strategies, all designed to achieve hegemony without fighting. For 2025, stoking regional and global fear was a major goal for the CCP and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), following on Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Little Red Book admonition, “We must be ruthless to our enemies; we must overpower and annihilate them.” But on Dec. 17, 2025, the Trump Administration demonstrated direct defiance of CCP terror with its record US$11.1 billion arms
The immediate response in Taiwan to the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US over the weekend was to say that it was an example of violence by a major power against a smaller nation and that, as such, it gave Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) carte blanche to invade Taiwan. That assessment is vastly oversimplistic and, on more sober reflection, likely incorrect. Generally speaking, there are three basic interpretations from commentators in Taiwan. The first is that the US is no longer interested in what is happening beyond its own backyard, and no longer preoccupied with regions in other
As technological change sweeps across the world, the focus of education has undergone an inevitable shift toward artificial intelligence (AI) and digital learning. However, the HundrED Global Collection 2026 report has a message that Taiwanese society and education policymakers would do well to reflect on. In the age of AI, the scarcest resource in education is not advanced computing power, but people; and the most urgent global educational crisis is not technological backwardness, but teacher well-being and retention. Covering 52 countries, the report from HundrED, a Finnish nonprofit that reviews and compiles innovative solutions in education from around the world, highlights a
RSS