Thank you for reporting on US Representative Jim Leach's coming to the presidential inauguration ("US announces its delegation to attend Chen's inauguration," May 16, page 1). His background makes him just about the most suitable American for this event. In 1986 in Washington I had the privilege of thanking him personally for what he was doing to help the Taiwanese people. He did quite a bit to help.
As one of the architects of the Taiwan Relations Act, Leach has helped Taiwan survive.
Years ago, Belgian author Simon Leyes told us what a disaster China was. But there was hope for change when former US president Richard Nixon established a relationship with China and, as Richard Holbrook wrote in 1982, agreed to disagree with China over Taiwan. Near the end of the 1970s, along came another president who dropped recognition of Taiwan and recognized China.
When that happened Leyes wrote a blistering article saying in effect that it would be impossible to do anything more wrong than that: America and China had established a satisfactory relationship, he said, and insisted that if the Chinese government wanted recognition by the US it would have to accept US recognition of Taiwan.
That US president was capable of doing good things but he missed the point completely in this case. Fortunately there were good and smart people around to give us the Taiwan Relations Act. And Leach helped Taiwan in many other ways -- just as he has helped the US. Even with many millions of citizens, Americans have a tough time trying to find the right man for president. Leach should have been given the job long ago. He does everything right. Welcome, Jim!
Frank O'Donnell
Taichung
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
RSS