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The international community should know by now that the KMT no longer represents the majority of Taiwanese, and that the party has been rejected by the people in two straight presidential elections.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.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
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The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
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