Reconsider highway project
I am a professor of geography visiting Taiwan, and have read about the proposed construction of a freeway from Taipei to Hualien. The experience of communities in North America and Europe has been fairly consistent: the construction of such highways is invariably supported by powerful economic interests and leads to severe environmental degradation, the irretrievable loss of tourism and a flow of natural resources and youth from rural areas into cities.
I had the pleasure of visiting Hualien. In stark contrast to the concrete behemoth megalopolis that now extends from Taipei to Kaohsiung, Taiwan's east coast is an almost unspoiled paradise. It is to be hoped that progressive politicians will realize that the area's relative remoteness and natural beauty represent a vast reservoir of wealth that will sustain future generations.
By contrast, the freeway project, while bringing in some short-term employment and a few juicy contracts for road builders and their political cronies, will leave behind a legacy of environmental and cultural damage from which Hualien will be unlikely to recover.
Indeed, the only obvious benefactor of the construction is the Hualien Ocean Park and related hotel. The scholarly literature is quite clear about this as well.
Such "conventional mass tourism" sites rarely bring lasting local benefits, again benefiting only a few very wealthy investors, while bankrupting smaller family tourism operators and thereby driving down local wages.
I fervently hope that my next visit to this beautiful country is not marred by news that the Hualien freeway project has gone ahead despite the carefully considered protests of its opponents.
William Hipwell
South Korea
Aussie hypocrisy
Hopefully the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer didn't get too much blood on his dress whilst waltzing with the Butchers of Beijing ("Australian minister plays down China's threat to Taiwan," Aug. 17, page 1). So Australia has now well and truly joined the ranks of the brown-nosers crawling to Beijing to try and fill their pockets.
His grasp of history, when urging the democratically-elected leader of another nation to "behave," appears to be non-existent. Would he have said the same to Mahatma Gandhi, Michael Collins, George Washington and a myriad of others who have walked the rocky road towards freedom and peace for their people?
Next time the troublemakers Down Under start their bleating for a Republic, perhaps the British should send in the gunboats to put them in their place -- rightfully under the rule of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second.
Michael Keeley
Tainan
Beijing's policy will backfire
China is desperate to stem Taiwan's further drift from its sphere of influence. Beijing has threatened Taiwanese businessmen in China because they supported President Chen Shui-bian (
Taiwanese companies have invested an estimated US$100 billion in China over the past decade alone. Indeed, Taiwanese businessmen are the principal movers and shakers in the Chinese economy. But these people know that China will not allow anything to stand in the way of the annexation of Taiwan so they keep their mouths shut.
When Taiwan's government recently held its annual meeting in Taiwan for China-based Taiwanese executives, Beijing was busy applying pressure to prevent them from attending the meeting.
The Chinese people are proud to have 5,000 years of history in which every government was the winner of a revolutionary war. When the government became corrupt, it was overthrown. The government and the people understood the game and how it was played. Now it is the 21st century and the world has become a "global village."
When the Soviet Union allowed the Berlin Wall to collapse, it disintegrated into many independent states. The Beijing government has allowed some degree of economic freedom. The Chinese people have begun to travel overseas. It is only a matter of time before these same people will ask for more freedom and democracy and will eventually threaten the existence of the Communist Party.
Threatening Taiwanese businessmen is certain to backfire and persuade foreign investors to cut back their investments in China. Economic prosperity in China will suffer.
My advice to the Beijing government is to embrace the values of freedom and peace like they have embraced capitalism.
Dr. Tien C. Cheng
Chair, Global Alliance for Democracy and Peace,
Chicago Chapter
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS