President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in her inaugural address on May 20 firmly said: “We will not accept the Beijing authorities’ use of ‘one country, two systems’ to downgrade Taiwan and undermine the cross-strait status quo.” The Chinese government was not too happy, and later that day, an opinion piece on the Web site of China’s state broadcaster China Central Television said: “While Tsai’s first inaugural address four years ago was read by Beijing as an ‘unfinished answer sheet,’ the one she presented this time was even more below-par.” Speaking to the China Review News Agency, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies vice president Yan Anlin (嚴安林), who also heads the Shanghai Association of Taiwan Studies, said: “Throughout Tsai’s address, the key to the realization of cross-strait peace and stability was nowhere to be found.” On May 21, the Study Times, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Party School, on its official WeChat account posted a long article on a tiring old topic titled “How the Qing Dynasty unified Taiwan.” Meanwhile, prominent Chinese military monthly magazine Naval and Merchant Ships released 11 minutes of footage on its Sina Weibo page, outlining a potential attack by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army on Taiwan and saying that China’s military forces could “liberate” Taiwan in 24 hours. How should the saber rattling coming out of Beijing be interpreted? The best answer is that Beijing’s mouthpieces, the CCP media outlets and overseas agencies are striking out at the US and Taiwan in full force and playing the old “mobilization through nationalism” card in a bid to “protect the emperor”— Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Such protection is particularly essential during the annual meetings of China’s top political, legislative and consultative bodies, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Congress — sometimes referred to as
French firm DCI-DESCO in April won a bid to upgrade Taiwan’s Lafayette frigates, which has strained ties between China and France. In 1991, France sold Taiwan six Lafayette frigates and in 1992 sold it 60 Mirage 2000 fighter jets. To prevent arms sales between the nations, China negotiated an agreement with France and in 1994 in a joint statement, France promised that there would be no future arms sales to Taiwan. From China’s point of view, the DCI-DESCO deal constitutes a breach of the agreement, but the French stance is that it is not selling Taiwan new weapons, but instead providing a service in accordance with the original contract. These weapons have been in service for more than 25 years and they are long overdue for upgrades, but France has been reluctant to provide such services due to the restrictions of the France-China agreement. Without support, the Ministry of National Defense had no choice but to put several Mirage 2000 fighter jets in storage. France agreeing to upgrade the frigates suggests that there is hope of a future deal to upgrade the fighter jets. It would be interesting to know why French President Emmanuel Macron, who is seen as a “Gaullist” and who has been friendly to China since taking office, changed his attitude. “Gaullism” is based on the foreign policy of Charles de Gaulle, the first president of the Fifth French Republic. The core of Gaullism is diplomatic autonomy. At the start of the Cold War, France was under the US military umbrella, resulting in French colonies seeking independence one after another. The Algerian independence movement in 1958 marked the peak of dissatisfaction with the government and the French public called for constitutional reform. Soon after taking office, De Gaulle made a series of moves, including conducting nuclear arms tests, breaking away from NATO and establishing diplomatic
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Four years ago, a bit player in the Venezuelan leadership was arrested in Colombia and extradited to the US to face drug charges. He proved to be an important catch. The man, Yazenky Lamas, worked as a bodyguard for the person widely considered the power behind Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s throne: first lady Cilia Flores. Now, with help from Lamas’ testimony, the US is preparing to charge Flores in the coming months with crimes that could include drug trafficking and corruption, four people familiar with the investigation of Flores told reporters. If Washington goes ahead with an indictment, these people said, the charges are likely to stem, at least in part, from a thwarted cocaine transaction that has already landed two of Flores’ nephews in a Florida penitentiary. US Department of Justice spokeswoman Nicole Navas declined to comment on any possible charges against Flores. Flores and her office at the Venezuelan National Assembly, where she is a deputy, did not respond to questions. Venezuelan Minister of Popular Power for Communication and Information Jorge Rodriguez said in a text message that questions about the possible US indictment of Flores were “nauseating, slanderous and offensive.” He did not elaborate. In a series of interviews, the first Lamas has given since his arrest, the former bodyguard said that Flores was aware of the coke-trafficking racket for which her two nephews were convicted by a US court. Flores also used her privileged position, he said, to reward family members with prominent and well-paid positions in government, a claim of nepotism backed by others interviewed for this article. Speaking behind reinforced glass at the prison in Washington, where he is detained, Lamas said that he is speaking out against Flores, because he feels abandoned by the Maduro administration, still ensconced in power even though many of its central figures, including the president,
Taiwanese band Mayday are to play an online concert today, the band announced on Facebook on Monday. The band is joining a growing number of artists worldwide who have been using online performances in the past few months to connect with fans during the COVID-19 pandemic and to raise funds for those affected by the disease. Billie Joe Armstrong of the US band Green Day, Lady Gaga and other artists performed from home on April 18 as part of the fundraising campaign One World: Together At Home, which was streamed on YouTube. On March 16, Coldplay lead vocalist Chris Martin performed from his home, streaming the performance on Instagram. Other artists such as John Legend have been holding fundraising performances on streaming platform Twitch. The response from fans has been overwhelmingly positive. In the comments section of the YouTube video of Martin’s home performance, one user named Andina Firmandiani wrote: “Thank you Chris, it kinda helped me with the anxiety I have here in Indonesia.” Another user named Elli wrote: “This made my day, these songs have helped me so much that it feels so amazing to hear Chris sing them just casually.” The success artists have had streaming their performances shows that it could be a viable format even after the pandemic has abated, but some improvements are needed to make it really work. For example, Texas-based singer-songwriter Rene Kladzyk said in an interview: “While livestream concerts are a fun way to connect with your fans, it’s not a replacement by any means, and [does not provide] the ability to make any real income.” It is true that Instagram does not provide any income to content creators, and YouTube and Twitch are only viable sources of income for the most popular creators. However, it is a problem that only fans who follow the artists
Chung Yuan ChristiaN University is clearly in bed with the People’s Republic of China. This can be the only explanation why the school’s authorities have done their utmost to shield a student, who lodged a complaint against an associate professor, and then used thuggish tactics to compel the teacher to issue two separate apologies to China. The original complaint, filed by an unnamed Chinese student, was for remarks by associate professor Chao Ming-wei (招名威) during a class on the origin of COVID-19. A second complaint was filed by the same student after Chao, during an apology, stated that he was a teacher from the “Republic of China [ROC], Taiwan.” The incident was exposed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Mark Ho (何志偉) at a news conference with Chao on May 11. DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) publicly expressed support for Chao, while other members of the legislature began to intervene, too. The Ministry of Education and the Mainland Affairs Council have announced the formation of a joint working group to investigate the affair. As Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) put it: “We must uphold freedom by means of the academy and the teaching profession, otherwise we might as well give up on our democracy.” Chao’s employers treated him incredibly badly, exerting pressure on him before the affair hit the headlines, then sitting on their hands during the ensuing media storm. The school has said one thing in public and another in private, and behaved in a thoroughly duplicitous manner that does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. The entirety of the university’s administrative apparatus was brought down on Chao to force him to apologize. According to video footage of the lesson released online, Chao says: “Yep, I’m talking about you.” Out of context, it appears as if Chao was referring to the class’
As technology advances, organizers are hosting more and more research and development (R&D) and innovation competitions. As a university professor, I often receive invitations from organizers at home and abroad, asking me to encourage students to participate in their contests. However, how many participants understand trade secret confidentiality before submitting their work? Chinese educational institutions often visit Taiwan to invite university students to various R&D competitions. They claim that the scope of these events is so massive that up to tens of thousands of people participate. They say that many wealthy Chinese “angel investors” attend, searching for the right investment, and a student that stands out could quickly have capital to start a successful business. In reviewing these invitations, I always ask to read the confidentiality protection clause for participants’ R&D projects, telling them that as a teacher, I have an obligation to protect my students’ work from being stolen. This request is frequently met with silence and then an awkward change of topic. Apart from events in China, the rules for various local and international R&D and innovation contests found online show that most organizers demand that participants sign a formal statement, which typically includes language such as: “Should an entry be deemed to involve replication, plagiarism, imposture, other illegal conducts or breaches competition rules, the organizer shall disqualify the entrant and revoke any prizes, and it shall demand the return of all prize money and certificate of merit if any.” However, I have never seen an organizer pledge to protect participants’ intellectual property rights (IPR). IPR protection of technology R&D used to focus on patent protection. As the artificial intelligence era has arrived, and development has progressed at a tremendous pace, many new inventions based on software are easily seen as purely conceptual, which poses a great challenge to patent protection eligibility. For this reason,
Stand with Hong Kong To date, to defy the proposed extradition bills which would allow the transfer of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to mainland China as a form of Beijing’s legal-political intervention in the territory’s internal affairs, mass demonstrations and assemblies have been organized in the former British colony in the past 12 months. As an outcome of the sociopolitical unrest, over 7,000 Hong Kongers have been arrested. Ample protesters who are prosecuted have therefore been seeking asylum in foreign countries, as they are subject to police’s brutality and harassment, alongside fear of unjust prosecutions. Aside from Canada, Taiwan is another popular region for Hong Kong citizens to seek asylum. By mid-July last year, around 30 Hong Kong protesters had already landed in Taiwan to file an asylum claim. Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kei (林榮基), the former manager of Causeway Bay Books, was detained in mainland China in 2015 after being accused of selling books critical of China’s leaders, who has been seeking asylum in Taiwan since early 2019, said he, by January this year, was aware of about 100 Hong Kongers in Taiwan who had fled there to avoid prosecution over their involvement in the anti-government protests in the semi-autonomous territory. However, since Feb. 6 this year, Taipei has banned all visitors from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, a travel restriction which aimed to bring the COVID-19 contagion under control. Once the travel restriction is lifted, it is expected that more Hong Kong protesters, especially those encountering prosecutions, would choose to seek asylum in Taiwan. When the outbreak of COVID-19 is under control, I hope the Taiwanese Government, within their capacity, can consider approving the asylum claims filed by those of Hong Kong origins, especially those who face prosecution due to their involvement in socio-political protests. To speak up and battle
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As China and the US exchange barbs over everything from trade to COVID-19 to Hong Kong, the two powers are at greater risk of careering into a physical confrontation. Nowhere are their warships and fighter jets coming as close to each other, with as much frequency, as the South China Sea. A military conflict would probably be devastating for both. There are no signs that either side actually wants one. Still, in times of high tension, miscalculations can have unintended consequences. In the first four months of this year, the US Navy conducted four freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, all or parts of which are claimed by Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. That puts it on track to surpass last year’s total of eight. At the same time, as China emerged from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) steamed out of port in Hainan and resumed drills in the area. It is a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between the militaries of two countries with a history of near-misses. With US President Donald Trump months from an election and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) rattling nationalistic cages at home to distract from a wounded economy, the mood is less conducive to the careful diplomacy needed to defuse a standoff at sea. Xi on Tuesday used an address to delegates at the Chinese National People’s Congress in Beijing to again warn the military to strengthen war preparations. “While a premeditated armed conflict between China and the US is a remote possibility, we see their military assets operating in greater regularity and at higher intensity in the same maritime domain,” said Collin Koh Swee Lean (許瑞麟), a research fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. “The interactions
Complaints of labor abuses and slavery on Thai fishing boats are routinely going unreported by authorities, an analysis by the Thomson Reuters Foundation revealed, raising fears that hundreds of fishermen have been denied justice and compensation. Revelations of modern slavery at sea emerged in Thailand in 2014, prompting the nation to vow to better regulate the sector to tackle labor exploitation, trafficking and illegal fishing after the EU threatened to ban Thai seafood imports. However, a senior official said a drive to clean up the industry was waning after exclusively obtained data revealed a large discrepancy between the official number of complaints and those recorded by four leading charities that advocate for fishermen. Freedom of information requests filed with the government over three months showed that 289 workers on fishing vessels in 11 provinces lodged labor abuse complaints between January 2015 and early this year. There were no details regarding the outcomes. Yet, the charities said that they had since 2015 helped about 1,600 fishermen from these regions raise grievances over issues from nonpayment and excessive overtime to verbal and physical abuse. They feared most complaints were being dealt with off-the-books and that workers were missing out on due compensation while exploitative employers avoided scrutiny and punishment. “For government officials, a large number of complaints means you’re not performing well, and many fishermen agree to mediation because they don’t want to waste time if the case goes to court,” the Raks Thai Foundation’s Sunwanee Dolah said. “But this results in repeated offenses and wrongdoers not being punished, causing a never-ending cycle of rights violations,” added Sunwanee, whose charity supports fishermen who are mainly migrants from neighboring Cambodia and Myanmar. Thanaporn Sriyakul, an official in the prime minister’s task force that oversees the fishing industry, said that efforts to enforce labor laws at sea had decreased “at an astonishing
A little more than three years after the Council of Grand Justices issued its historic Constitutional Interpretation No. 748 ruling that Civil Code provisions defining marriage as between a man and a woman contravened the Constitution, the grand justices have declared that treating adultery as a criminal offense is unconstitutional and that such laws were immediately terminated. With yesterday’s ruling, Interpretation No. 791, the justices have once again gone where elected politicians and the Ministry of Justice have too long feared to tread — hiding behind pedantically worded opinion polls, whether government or privately commissioned, showing that a large majority of respondents were opposed the decriminalization of adultery. Interpretation No. 791 overturns Interpretation 554, issued in 2002, which upheld Article 239 of the Criminal Code on offenses against marriage and family, and declared “the freedom of sexual behavior is subject to the restriction put on it by marriage and the family system.” The grand justices’ ruling also pushes the ministry and the Executive Yuan to fulfill their obligations under the Act Governing Execution of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (公民與政治權利國際公約及經濟社會文化權利國際公約施行法), passed by the Legislative Yuan on March 31, 2009, stipulating that government agencies must conform to the two covenants’ human rights guarantees and formulate, amend or abolish those laws and regulations that are not in compliance with the covenants within two years of the act entering into force. Under the 2009 law, the government was required to establish a reporting system to monitor its compliance with the two covenants. Two reviews by groups of international experts of the government’s rights reports, in 2013 and 2017, both found fault with the government’s implementation of various elements of the covenants. Both reports recommended the government abolish the criminalization of adultery on the
During last year’s legislative review of the central government budget for this fiscal year, lawmakers requested that the Ocean Affairs Council assess feasibility and necessity of building airborne patrolling and monitoring capabilities for the Coast Guard Administration (CGA). The council in February submitted the assessment report to the legislature, and it has since been discussed in several Chinese-language media. Having spent several decades teaching maritime law enforcement and security, and observing the situation in the waters surrounding the nation as well as the development of coast guard agencies around the world, this is an issue of great importance. Something is always going on in the waters around Taiwan. Off the west coast, Chinese fishing boats often cross into Taiwanese waters where they overfish and dredge sea sand. Off the north and the east coast, Japanese government vessels occasionally interfere with operations of Taiwanese fishing boats. Off the south coast, Vietnamese boats have often operated illegally in Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone during fishing season, and some are even hired by Taiwanese to engage in illegal activities such as drug trafficking and human smuggling. In the past few years, China has conducted frequent military maneuvers in the region. Since 2016 it has been common for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to deploy warplanes and military vessels to encircle Taiwan or send them to the South China Sea or the West Pacific, passing through Taiwan’s waters and airspace. In the past few months, as countries across the world have been occupied with the fight against COVID-19, Beijing has seized the opportunity to strengthen its military influence in the South China Sea and the Asia-Pacific region. Taiwan must be cautious when dealing with these maritime threats and provocations in order to avoid accidental conflicts and undesirable incidents. The coast guard is globally accepted as the government body responsible for
In the movie Star Wars: Episode 3 — Revenge of the Sith, the Galactic Senate gathered to vote on the reorganization of the Galactic Republic into the Empire. Sith Lord Darth Sidious justified this change to “ensure the security and continuing stability” of the Republic. The Senators were elated. Princess Padme Amidala of the planet Naboo said: “This is how liberty dies ... with thunderous applause.” A similar event might have occurred when the Chinese National People’s Congress gathered to vote on national security legislation for Hong Kong. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) would echo Darth Sidious, claiming that stability is China’s only way forward. His words would be met with the thunderous applause of 2,980 delegates from around China, but not a single directly elected representative from Hong Kong would have a say. The freedom-loving world watches with dismay and horror as the orchestrated show of “democracy” in China reveals itself. However, remember that none of this is surprising. When Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997, the territory was the face of modern China and what all its major cities aspired to be. Forbes reported that in 1993 Hong Kong’s economy was valued at 27 percent of China’s, but by 2018 it was only 2.7 percent. Hong Kong has been eclipsed by China. As of last year, Beijing’s economy was worth US$553 billion; Shanghai, US$540 billion; Shenzhen, US$374 billion; and Hong Kong, US$372 billion. The numbers show that China has lost interest in Hong Kong. The territory has no long-term value for China since other cities can replicate and surpass its success. A founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), said: “The Chinese do not know ‘liberty,’ but only about ‘getting rich.’” The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), liberators of the oppressed and the guiding light of the Chinese, follow wherever the
During my twenty-two years in the US Senate, I became a student of Taiwan and its history. I was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy, and have made at least 25 trips to Taiwan and have been invited as an observer to two of the nation’s presidential elections. Taiwan’s continuous economic miracle has seen the nation transition from a mixed agricultural-industrial society at the end of Japan’s 50 years of jurisdiction to today’s economic powerhouse, unmatched by most nations of the world. Just as outstanding has been Taiwan’s decades of resistance and democratization that finally overcame the initial reign of terror and subsquent dictatorial rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and attained a sophisticated democratic system affording human rights, free speech, free elections and a free press. Today’s Taiwanese are a unique and proud people all their own. All surveys find that they overwhelmingly identify as Taiwanese, not Chinese, and do not consider Taiwan by any measure to be a part of China. Beijing’s “one country, two systems” rings just as hollow and unacceptable in Taiwan as it does in Hong Kong. Taiwan’s national name, the Republic of China, which is based on a foreign Chinese constitution that never defined it as a legally applicable place to begin with, is totally out of touch with the realities Taiwan faces, is in conflict with and objected to by the People’s Republic of China, is unrecognizable in international society and should therefore be rectified to “Republic of Taiwan” through a national referendum process. This would finally fulfill the 1945 UN Charter, whose provisions stipulate self-determination for once-colonized peoples, and achieve a resolution that Taiwanese deserve. In return, Taiwan can and will be a great contributor to the world with its know-how, specialties and exceptional resources, which
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By announcing new security legislation for Hong Kong, China has effectively brought an end to the era of “one country, two systems.” And that means the worst is yet to come, as Chinese leaders’ efforts to enforce full political control over the territory meet fierce local resistance. China’s decision to crack down on Hong Kong with new security legislation has shocked the world. However, to those who read the resolution issued in November last year by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it came as no surprise. In that document’s section pertaining to Hong Kong, the CCP signaled its intention to assert full control over the former British colony. Tighter national security laws and the establishment of unspecified new enforcement mechanisms would be just two components of a much larger, more comprehensive strategy. Now that China is pursuing this strategy in earnest, we should expect it to follow through with the additional measures announced in November. Besides bypassing the Hong Kong legislature with a new national security law, the CCP also intends to change the procedures for appointing the territory’s chief executive and principal officials. It would strengthen Hong Kong’s law-enforcement capabilities, and conduct a campaign to inculcate “national consciousness and patriotic spirit” among Hong Kong’s civil servants and young people. The goal is to integrate the territory’s economy much more closely with that of the mainland. As if the much-feared security law was not bad enough, the worst is yet to come. In any case, implementation of the security law is likely be enough to end the so-called “one country, two systems” governance model that the territory has maintained since returning to Chinese rule in 1997. According to remarks from a deputy chairman of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, Article Four of the proposed law would
Antelope is best, monkey is chewy, bats need a sauce, forest porcupine is mild and pangolin — one of the most trafficked animals in the world — tastes great roasted, but smells awful. That, at least, was what the Gabonese workers told us. We were in a Belgian-owned logging camp in Gabon. The day had been spent watching giant trees being felled for the Chinese market, but by evening everyone’s thoughts had turned to food. Most rural Africans and Asians say “bush” or wild meat is healthier, tastier and often cheaper than the bland meat of most farmed animals like chickens or pigs. The joke among the African loggers in the camp that night was that Asians would eat anything alive in the forest, but the squeamish Europeans would eat nothing. Today, as a result of COVID-19 and its suspected origins in a Chinese wet market, governments and the WHO are coming under growing pressure from conservationists, vegans and animal protection, zoo and welfare groups to not just stop the hunting of all wild animals for food, but to end the commercial trade in live animals with a global ban. Now is the time to link human health with biodiversity loss and animal suffering, and to close all markets selling live or dead wild animals, they say. “We have called for the closure of illegal and unregulated wildlife markets, primarily in urban areas,” a WWF UK spokeswoman said. “What we are concerned about is the illegal consumption of highly threatened wildlife, often seen as a delicacy.” There is no doubt that wild meat hunting and consumption are heavily impacting the world’s wildlife, giving rise to what is called “the empty forest,” where few large mammals remain. A 2016 Royal Society paper showed that the bushmeat trade is growing fast, with devastating results. “As wildlife populations
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) yesterday wrapped up its annual party conference-cum-national decision-making forums in Beijing: the National People’s Congress (NPC) and National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), known colloquially as the “two meetings.” They are normally tightly choreographed affairs, designed to project an image of stability and unassailable strength, but several events leading up this month’s sessions provided strong indications that all is not well in the state of Denmark. The first sign of major discontent came in March, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis in China, when an article by real-estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang (任志強) began circulating on social media under the headline: “An official call to arms against Xi: The clown who insists on wearing the emperor’s new clothes.” It was a sharply worded excoriation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) cover-up of the outbreak. As the son of one of the CCP’s revolutionary leaders, Ren is a well-connected “princeling,” but he has voiced criticism of Xi’s ruling style and policies in the past, earning him the nickname “big cannon.” However, his latest letter appears to have broken the dam of discontent against Xi’s leadership. Not long afterwards, a second condemnatory missive, purportedly written by Deng Pufang (鄧樸方) — son of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) — began circulating online. It set out 15 questions for Xi, such as: “China’s international image has plummeted and the nation’s trust is in tatters — who should bear responsibility for this calamity?” China watchers believe that irrespective of who actually wrote the letter, it represented a call to arms within the party to topple Xi. Former Qinghai Province CPPCC delegate Wang Ruiqin (王瑞琴) also released an open letter addressed to all members of the two meetings, calling on them to oust Xi and listing a catalogue of
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