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.
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
Taiwan ranks second globally in terms of share of population with a higher-education degree, with about 60 percent of Taiwanese holding a post-secondary or graduate degree, a survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed. The findings are consistent with Ministry of the Interior data, which showed that as of the end of last year, 10.602 million Taiwanese had completed post-secondary education or higher. Among them, the number of women with graduate degrees was 786,000, an increase of 48.1 percent over the past decade and a faster rate of growth than among men. A highly educated population brings clear advantages.
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