With the March 26 rally, the Taiwanese people showed the international community their determination not to accept annexation by China and it also asked the world to help Taiwan oppose any Chinese attempts to take military action based on Beijing's "Anti-Secession" Law.
Regrettably, pro-unification forces are taking every opportunity to weaken Taiwan's demands. Foremost among these is Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
On the day of the demonstration, reporters from this newspaper asked police at the rally for an estimate of participants. At the time, they said it was impossible to make such an estimate. Ma, however, cited police figures when announcing his estimate. Reporters from many countries and media organizations were present to report on the demonstration. They -- and the march participants -- are all witnesses, and Ma's fake numbers convince no one.
This is not very surprising. Ma's long-standing toadying to Beijing has won him the nickname "Chief Executive Ma" -- an echo of the title bestowed on Hong Kong's leader. Last year, when Ma wanted to visit the territory at the invitation of a local group, a slight criticism of the recently proposed Anti-Secession Law led to his being denied a visa. He is now clearly trying to win Beijing's forgiveness.
Ma's announcement that no more than 270,000 people participated in the demonstration is as despicable -- and as easily disprovable -- as former Chinese premier Li Peng's (
Just two days after the rally, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kun (
The international community should know by now that the KMT no longer represents the majority of Taiwanese, and that the party has been rejected by the people in two straight presidential elections. In last December's legislative elections, the KMT only won 79 seats, trailing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the largest party in the legislature, by 10 seats.
The people of Taiwan support peace and hope for cross-strait dialogue. Unfortunately, ever since President Chen Shui-bian (
Taiwan has not given up. It will still work toward establishing a dialogue, but this dialogue should not be conducted by the increasingly marginalized KMT. Instead, it should be conducted by the democratically elected government that represents the people of Taiwan. It is most unwise to offer any praise for the KMT's visit to China, for this is tantamount to encouraging the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party to cooperate in further isolating the DPP and the people of Taiwan which it represents. That is not the kind of dialogue the people want.
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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