Lung Ying-tai (
Since then, a conflict has been brewing between Lung and Lin Mun-lee (
Before the dispute, Iap Phok-bun (
These problems didn't surface with the Taipei City government after Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was elected as the city's mayor in December of 1998, but became media headlines after he invited Lung from her home in Germany to head the new bureau on Nov. 6 of last year.
And so it seems that politics don't exist without culture and culture is actually a response to politics.
Take Lung's "half year press conference" as an example. Held on May 4, the anniversary of the "May Fourth Movement (
When then-Taipei Mayor Chen tried to install his colleague, Lo Wen-chia (
Even if it is possible to let "culture be culture and politics be politics," Lung should be very careful to do her job, for she is the first woman to decide who can and should share more resources.
But Lung seems to not be paying attention to this. That was the reason she was criticized for not giving sufficient weight to Taiwan as having its own culture, but for being a famous writer with a "greater China complex."
Lung once penned an article criticizing President Lee Teng-hui (
On Jan. 24, this newspaper ran an editorial saying that Lung was not suitable to be a governmental official.
The editorial said that "Lung's independent working style, weak personal skills and self-centered attitude have made her hard to work with. Worse still, her pride as an intellectual and, dare we say, her perception that, as a mainlander, she is culturally superior show through her words and actions."
One example of this, Lee Min-yung (
If Eberhard Diepgen, mayor of Berlin, should be blamed for his absence at the ground-breaking ceremony of German's first national Holocaust memorial museum, then Taipei citizens should consider wether they need a new director for their Cultural Affairs Bureau or a new Taipei City mayor.
George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This article will help readers avoid repeating mistakes by examining four examples from the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces and the Republic of China (ROC) forces that involved two city sieges and two island invasions. The city sieges compared are Changchun (May to October 1948) and Beiping (November 1948 to January 1949, renamed Beijing after its capture), and attempts to invade Kinmen (October 1949) and Hainan (April 1950). Comparing and contrasting these examples, we can learn how Taiwan may prevent a war with
A recent trio of opinion articles in this newspaper reflects the growing anxiety surrounding Washington’s reported request for Taiwan to shift up to 50 percent of its semiconductor production abroad — a process likely to take 10 years, even under the most serious and coordinated effort. Simon H. Tang (湯先鈍) issued a sharp warning (“US trade threatens silicon shield,” Oct. 4, page 8), calling the move a threat to Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” which he argues deters aggression by making Taiwan indispensable. On the same day, Hsiao Hsi-huei (蕭錫惠) (“Responding to US semiconductor policy shift,” Oct. 4, page 8) focused on
Taiwan is rapidly accelerating toward becoming a “super-aged society” — moving at one of the fastest rates globally — with the proportion of elderly people in the population sharply rising. While the demographic shift of “fewer births than deaths” is no longer an anomaly, the nation’s legal framework and social customs appear stuck in the last century. Without adjustments, incidents like last month’s viral kicking incident on the Taipei MRT involving a 73-year-old woman would continue to proliferate, sowing seeds of generational distrust and conflict. The Senior Citizens Welfare Act (老人福利法), originally enacted in 1980 and revised multiple times, positions older
Taiwan’s business-friendly environment and science parks designed to foster technology industries are the key elements of the nation’s winning chip formula, inspiring the US and other countries to try to replicate it. Representatives from US business groups — such as the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, and the Arizona-Taiwan Trade and Investment Office — in July visited the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) headquarters and its first fab. They showed great interest in creating similar science parks, with aims to build an extensive semiconductor chain suitable for the US, with chip designing, packaging and manufacturing. The
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