James Soong (
Instead, Soong first made the mistake of being anti-communist, allowing his opponent to point out that China's "one country, two systems" offer allows Taiwan not to be communist. He also let his opponent trap him in an apparent admission that the Taiwan-China issue was an internal affair, whereas Taiwan needs internationalization of the issue, in fact, to claim the rights of the Taiwanese under the UN charter to determine their own future.
Soong only scored on the issue of China's military threat. Even then, when Yan said that China was not against the people of Taiwan but against the small number of foreign agents and Taiwanese separatists working to split China, Soong should have called the man a fool who didn't have a clue what he was talking about. This would have been true, and robustness towards Beijing apologists usually goes down well with a Taiwanese electorate. But then again, part of Soong's problem is that his core support is not Taiwanese.
Yet what really puzzled us was how Soong, who for many years was the defender of the indefensible in his days as chief spokesman for the then-murderous KMT, appeared to have his hands tied in his every response to Yan's statements. This might have been partly the result of knowing that his performance would be watched and judged in Taiwan. But it should also be remembered that Soong did not leave the KMT because he disagreed with it, but because he couldn't run it himself. Soong has no quarrel with KMT orthodoxy -- unlike, we suspect, President Lee Teng-hui (
It is hard, therefore, not to see Soong's weakness in debate as part of the KMT's ideological weakness as a whole. We have encountered this recently in the distressing performance of Taiwan's representative to the US, Stephen Chen
The problem is that what Taiwan really needs tallies hardly at all with what the KMT -- the Chinese Nationalist party -- claims is its duty to provide. It is supposed to be committed to one goal (greater China, the three principles of the people, etc.) while it is plain that it should be working toward another (internationally recognized self-determination for the people of Taiwan). The fact that it can't maintain its policy of lip service to the former while pursuing the latter is mostly because people less capable of double-think than President Lee tend to take the former too seriously.
What the KMT needs, for its sake and Taiwan's, is to lose office. Only then can it decide what it stands for. Only then can it close the gap between what it says and what it does, into which so much of the credibility that Taiwan should have earned from the last decade of reforms has fallen and been lost.
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My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
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As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry