According to news reports, not long after Pan Hsi-hsien
First, how can one just "retire" from the position of NSB personnel director -- a position of such importance -- and then take a job in China? Is it because there aren't any laws and regulations governing this, or are there simply no teeth to enforce these laws?
It seems that there are regulations barring persons retiring from important public positions from going into civilian jobs (at least this is the case for some public servants). In also appears that these retirees cannot work in regions where they might divulge secrets to which they had access. (If there aren't any such rules, some should be laid down immediately).
If the law already regulates those retiring from government positions and yet this kind of incident still occurs, isn't it manifestly evident that a flaw exists in the way the law is applied?
Furthermore, doesn't this incident show that the application of the law has failed at all levels, from the NSB to the Bureau of Entry and Exit? If this is indeed the reason behind the problems, these agencies must rigorously review what happened, to discover where the mistake occurred. If the problem is found to be a systemic one, then these agencies must immediately set about rectifying it.
Second, how could news so closely related to national security be broken by the media, allowing everyone (especially the Chinese government) to hear about it? It is, to say the least, reasonable to presume that Chinese officials would be all too keen to get hold of someone of Pan's standing and that the leaking of such information would make him a specific target in China. There would also -- almost inevitably -- be damage to our national interests that would be difficult to repair.
According to news reports, the leak may have been due to in-fighting in the NSB. If this is true, how could someone do something like this for personal gain? It is simply unthinkable.
What's done is done. Neither identifying nor punishing those responsible is likely to compensate for the damage done. But it should be decided where the focus in solving the problem should now be.
I believe any strategy for resolving the issue should place our national interests at its very core. Government ministries in particular (not to mention the Presidential Office, NSB and Legislative Yuan) should be careful to preserve national interests in their handling of problems arising from this incident, in order to prevent this problem -- this crisis -- from causing further harm.
Yang Yung-nane is a professor in the department of administrative management, Central Police University.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
A large majority of Taiwanese favor strengthening national defense and oppose unification with China, according to the results of a survey by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). In the poll, 81.8 percent of respondents disagreed with Beijing’s claim that “there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China,” MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference on Thursday last week, adding that about 75 percent supported the creation of a “T-Dome” air defense system. President William Lai (賴清德) referred to such a system in his Double Ten National Day address, saying it would integrate air defenses into a
RSS