While the pan-blue camp is still engaging in its final struggle against the results of the presidential election, Singapore's Straits Times has reported that Li Jiaquan (
Washington and Beijing play the most decisive roles in the cross-strait relationship. They both have accepted that Chen was the legitimate winner of the presidential election. Yet the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) are still reluctant to concede defeat.
The KMT-PFP alliance has persistently questioned the legitimacy of Chen's victory and mobilized their supporters to deny the legitimacy of Chen's reelection. Ironically, it is the legitimacy of the pan-blues' protests that have been most doubted. Even the international media has conceded that they have yet to put forward concrete evidence to support their vote-rigging claims.
Since the two parties initiated their series of lawsuits, they have provided no evidence, relying instead on paid advertisements calling upon their supporters to come up with some evidence. While more gullible members of the public may believe the old adage that "where's there's smoke, there's fire," the nation's judges are not impressed.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday held its first hearing of the KMT-PFP lawsuit requesting the election be invalidated. Presiding Judge Cheng Ya-ping (
In Beijing, Zhongnanhai's Taiwan strategies have always been rigid, disregarding changes in Taiwan's political situation. Li told the Straits Times that, under the "one China" principle, China is prepared to accept the existence of and interact with the Republic of China. He also said that Zhongnanhai regretted the inflexibility of its past cross-strait policies.
Even if Li's comments do not represent the Chinese government's stance, it is interesting that he was willing to admit that China's rigid policy on cross-strait relations has been a major mistake. Unfortunately for the people of Taiwan, neither the KMT and the PFP appear to be aware of or willing to face changes in public opinion, much less admit that they made mistakes in the past.
It is hard to believe that the two parties' ability to adapt to their environment is inferior to that of an advisor to the Chinese leadership. They repeatedly claim to represent the people of Taiwan and to be supported by half of the electorate. How could they lose the presidential election with such support?
The nation is eagerly awaiting the results of the recount. The people really want to know if the Central Election Commission made mistakes when counting the votes. How else could the shameless and shiftless KMT and PFP lose the election by such a narrow margin?
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;
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
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
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