The Chinese Communist Party's third generation leader Jiang Zemin (
Does this mean that Hu's time has arrived? It is still too early to say.
Hu's rise has been shrouded in mystery. When he took over the presidency and the position as party leader, international media could not pin down his political beliefs. Even though he had already wielded considerable power, he was careful not to impinge on Jiang's power. He did not pronounce his policies, probably because he was prudent. What he did was a likely necessary political calculation during a leadership change in an authoritarian regime.
With Hu's replacement of Jiang, will there be a policy change? In the short term, Hu is unlikely to modify Jiang's policies too much. Beijing will continue to stay on good terms with the US. Not challenging Washington, it will however embrace policies that increase its presence and influence in the Asia-Pacific region and globally. Though Hu's proposal of "peaceful rising" for China was shot down by hawks like Jiang, the country's continued economic development will inevitably force Hu to downplay the intimidating force China represents. Hu's use of strategies is expected to be more flexible since he now does not need to worry as much about pressure from hawks in the military.
Jiang has held power for over a decade and has been a dominant influence on cross-strait relations. "Jiang's eight points" are on a par with Deng Xiaoping's (
In the two years that Hu has been in power, he has focused primarily on battling corruption and building up the economy. While Hu will, in the short term, assess the results of the US presidential election and Taiwan's legislative election, he will certainly not depart from Jiang's Eight Points. This does not rule out a more active posture in developing cross-strait trade as a means of using commercial pressure to bring about unification. This is something that Taiwan needs to guard against.
In his videoconference with the UN Correspondents Association last week, Chen sought to engage Hu in a dialogue. Taiwan recognizes that Hu is now established in power, but any thaw in the cross-strait relationship will probably have to wait till spring next year.
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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