On Sept. 19, Jiang Zemin (
When Jiang received the then president of National Tsing Hua University Shen Chun-shan (
After taking leadership of the CCP in June 1989 and becoming chairman of the military commission in November of that year, he remained in a precarious position for at least five or six years, as former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) was governing China behind his back. He was also restrained by party heavyweights, and the views of hawkish military leaders.
Surprisingly, he prevailed under the bizarre circumstances following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. As other aged comrades gradually died away, his position solidified.
Of course, in terms of Jiang's survival during the extremely complex political and social situation between 1989 and 1996, his weight problem was just a joke. As the old saying goes, "the times produce their heroes." The key to his success lay mostly in the equality among all forces in Zhongnanhai. He distinguished himself from others because none of those forces was able to completely dominate the situation.
More surprisingly, after the low-key Jiang successfully rid himself of all his aged competitors in 1996, he began to display a strong will to lead. First, in 1997, he forced his strongest rival, Qiao Shi (
Was Jiang's success just a result of his political tactics? The answer is an unqualified "no." I once had a chance in 1993 to see him in person, as he was lec-tured subordinates for over half an hour. Honestly, he does not have the tricky, deep, sophisticated personality of his predecessors; he is also more boastful.
This characteristic is a minus in the battlefield of power. But Jiang's leadership style was quite appropriate in the 1990s, because the CCP was eager to boost its domestic economy, break through international blockades and resolve political disputes. The formation of Jiang's era -- especially China's unstoppable "peaceful rising" within 10 years of the Tiananmen Incident -- was actually 90 percent attributable to the overall situation and 10 percent due to luck.
Has the curtain dropped on Jiang's era? It is still too early to say. Although Hu is now serving as president, CCP general secretary and chairman of the military commission, he is not necessarily able to exercise his power yet. If Jiang's physical condition is still good, members of the "Shanghai clique" at the CCP's Political Bureau will be able to go visit him from time to time. Thus, the time for "what Hu says goes" has not arrived.
Whether Vice President Zeng Qinghong (
The Jiang faction inside the commission is perhaps rooted even deeper than that of the CCP's politburo.
Lee Fu-chung is an assistant professor at National Chengchi University.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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
RSS