China apparently believes in "panda diplomacy" -- the giving of bribes to influence the other side. Taiwan should use the same tactic.
The Chen government should now arrange to give back to China all the art and artifacts stolen from China in 1949 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). They should also offer KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
Then all who follow this tottering traitor could get their fondest wish -- immediate unification of the two competing "Republics of China." Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) now loves the KMT, everything should go well for Mainlanders in their old home.
Then Taiwan's vast native majority could get on with being their own nation -- without further dilution from those who naively trust the "democratic" nature of the CCP. (Taiwan should keep the gold bullion the KMT stole from China as reparations for the deaths of thousands of Taiwanese at the hands of KMT Mainlanders in 1947 -- as well as for decades of one-party, martial law rule thereafter.)
A Republic of Taiwan might not be the first Chinese democracy, but it would be the only one. In a way, by sending their leaders to China at this time, the KMT and People First Party (PFP) have done the DPP a huge political favor. Now Taiwanese can never elect a president from either of those sellout parties -- without signaling thereby that they are ready for immediate subjugation by China.
The minute China can convince the world (and US voters) that a majority of Taiwanese favor a leader who advocates eventual unification, all hope of democracy on either side of the Taiwan Strait will be lost for generations. In that day, China will not need their many missiles to subdue "their" beautiful island.
A handful of People's Liberation Army commandos in a speedboat would be sufficient. Americans would feel justified in looking away.
Jim Hale
Eugene, Oregon
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
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