President Chen Shui-bian (
Later, when visiting Pearl Harbor during his stopover in Hawaii, he gave an unscripted talk in which he cited the Pacific theater of World War II as an example. He said that the US and Japan were in fact enemies half a century ago, but they are friends today. He also said that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should learn from this great example.
Indeed, the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 triggered the Pacific War, and the historical wound caused by the two atomic bombs also exists. But after half a century, the US and Japan are already military and diplomatic partners working to maintain peace and stability in the western Pacific region. This development proves that no conflict in the international community cannot be resolved.
The following day, the issue with the repatriation of illegal Chinese immigrants that has been left in limbo since the presidential election in March was resolved. Through Taiwan's and China's Red Cross organizations, China accepted the return of 178 illegal immigrants from Taiwan, and returned five Taiwanese criminals to Taiwan. In a statement, the Mainland Affairs Council said China plans to receive yet another group of illegal immigrants on Sept. 10. After a long period of tense relations across the Taiwan Strait, even such a small easing of tension is enough to be exciting.
China has for a long time posed a military threat to Taiwan, and it keeps around 600 missiles aimed at Taiwan along its southern coast, forcing Taiwan to find ways to defend itself -- partly through R&D and arms purchases, partly by strengthening its military.
Apart from having missiles aimed at Taiwan, the People's Liberation Army's exercise on Dongshan Island is clearly targeted at Taiwan. Dongshan Island is located in the southern part of the Taiwan Strait, only 181km from the Penghu islands and 307km from Kaohsiung. The exercise mainly consists of simulated landings and clearly mimics the capture of Penghu.
The people of Taiwan normally repay one good deed with another, which means that if your opponent gives you a gift, you have to give him something in return. Chen's initiative in responding to the military retreat from Dongshan Island serves to further underline Taiwan's goodwill. If China does not pose a military threat to us, there is no need for us to strengthen our military.
We sincerely hope that the warmth being shown across the Strait recently is an indication of a more constructive relationship, rather than one-off incidents.
China should build greater confidence in the goodwill of nations made up of the same race and speaking the same language. Once China and Taiwan put aside enmity and choose to engage in the spirit of friendship, they could become the strongest allies in the Western Pacific. We also hope that China will understand the Taiwanese way of doing things, namely that we will repay one good turn with another, so that Taiwan might eventually become China's closest friend.
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
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;
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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