While the US and Japan are busy expressing their concern over China's "anti-secession" legislation, the EU's silence leaves one to wonder if the union has disappeared from the face of the earth -- or has become the paid-for lackey of the autocrats in Beijing.
The past few years have shown us that the EU is partial to China when it comes to the cross-strait issue, believing that its business interests are best served by kowtowing to Beijing. It is also clear that the EU's desire to be seen as a competitor of the US in the international political arena has overwhelmed its common sense.
If it wants to be taken seriously in world affairs, then the EU might consider adopting some of the mannerisms of a serious player. It might consider being pragmatic, rather than simply posturing like a vain peacock.
The EU should remember that Taiwan has a larger population than two-thirds of the world's countries, and that its economy is bigger than many of the EU member states' economies. So if the EU wants to opt out of the market and leave the US and Japan to do business with Taiwan, then good luck to it.
Europe was the center of world power prior to the rise of the US, and the founding of the EU has given Europe the chance to rise to the position of global leadership once again.
But the irony is that the EU is failing to exhibit any of the traits of leadership. It cares nothing about the security situation in Asia nor about China's neglect of human rights. Instead, the EU is colluding with China, and the two even appear to be treating the US as their joint enemy. This has meant that the EU is ready to sacrifice Taiwan -- a stable democracy -- simply to differentiate itself from the US and pander to China.
How pathetic.
The details of the "anti-secession" law that were released on Tuesday show that Beijing regards Taiwan as an issue which is a remnant of the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT.
This is wrong.
In 1683, the Qing general Shi Lang (
Taiwan has had a hodgepodge of invaders and imperial conquerors, and its people are a diverse reflection of the land's long history as a strategic crossroads.
So wherein lies the legitimacy of China's claim to sovereignty over Taiwan?
The only masters of Taiwan are the people of Taiwan.
The EU should recognize that being a force in the international political arena brings responsibilities, not just benefits.
How sad that after the hand-wringing rhetoric of some EU members in the build-up to the war in Iraq, that those same members are now glibly trying to justify selling advanced weapons to China.
The bureaucrats in Brussels need to open their eyes.
China wants advanced weapons to fight a war, and it wants an "anti-secession" law to legitimize that war.
Is this what the EU supports?
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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