What is it that's preventing your reporters from giving us a deeper story on Gary Wang (王令麟), the KMT legislator and head of Eastern Multimedia (東森多媒體), who is being held on suspicion of rigging a land deal? This is surely the political/corruption case to beat them all and will define the near-term future of politics and business in Taiwan if it is pushed to its logical conclusion.
Wang is much more than a three-term legislator and head of one of the island's biggest cable TV companies. What is not mentioned in your reports is, perhaps most importantly, that he is the son of Wang You-tseng (王又曾), patriarch of the Rebar Group (力霸集團) of companies and a member of the KMT central standing committee. The senior Wang is about as high as you can go in the KMT's business/political hierarchy and, until the May 31 election, was widely acknowledged as being more powerful than a Cabinet minister, or perhaps even the premier.
Who can forget the image a few years ago of he and Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫), the KMT's other grandaddy of industry, being asked to shake hands in front of the cameras to resolve the latest skirmish in Taiwan's perennial cable TV war by the party's secretary-general, after the GIO Director General had surrendered any pretense about who really ran the government.
More to the point, under the previous government it would have been unthinkable for prosecutors to go after Wang's son. That they now feel emboldened by the new president's desire to clean up corruption in Taiwan is hardly surprising, however. What is going to be really interesting to see is whether they are able to take this one all the way.
When President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was touring Taiwan's diplomatic allies recently, anyone who recalls that famous scene from the cable TV war could not have failed to notice the gray-haired business tycoon following close on the president's heels.
Anthony Lawrance
Taipei, Taiwan
Real victims of the drug war
The article "Europe losing war on drugs, US agency warns" (Sept. 7, page 9) might almost have been amusing, were it not for the millions of people whose lives have been ruined -- not by drugs themselves, but by the costly, futile, and ultimately destructive attempts of most governments to prevent the sale and use of certain mind-altering substances.
The article consisted mostly of hyperbolic quotes from a report by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the USA, a country which now boasts the highest percentage of jailed citizens in the world.
Over half of these inmates are non-violent drug offenders. Normal, hardworking, "respectable" folks who just happened to get caught with a bag of weed.
A college student with a promising future (who also enjoys getting high once in a while) now finds himself in jail, his family bankrupted by the legal fees spent trying to keep him free.
A mother is jailed because she borrows a friend's car, not knowing there's a "stash" in the glove compartment. Her children become wards of the state and are sent to a foster home.
An AIDS patient uses medical marijuana to fight the nausea induced by the "cocktail" of drugs prescribed by his doctors (if you can't keep the medicine "down" long enough to absorb it, it does no good). The DEA prosecutes him and he dies in his sleep, choking on vomit.
A child is condemned to life in a wheelchair because she is caught in the crossfire of a "turf" war between rival drug-dealing gangs -- gangs which would not even be involved with the drug trade if it were legal and well regulated.
A woman is raped because her attacker had to be paroled early, in order to make room in an over-stuffed prison for the aforementioned college student.
These are the real victims of the "War On Drugs."
Meanwhile, the thugs and kingpins who actually make money on the illegal drug trade laugh at our stupidity. They don't want drugs to be legalized, because then their huge profits would dry up and they'd have to actually work for a living -- perhaps growing coffee beans instead of coca.
It would be nice to see this hardline viewpoint balance out with an article representing the fast-growing segment of the population who believe legalization, regulation, and education are the most effective strategies for curbing the ills associated with drug abuse.
I respectfully suggest the following Web sites for further study of this critically important issue:
John Diedrichs
Taipei, Taiwan
The US Senate’s passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which urges Taiwan’s inclusion in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise and allocates US$1 billion in military aid, marks yet another milestone in Washington’s growing support for Taipei. On paper, it reflects the steadiness of US commitment, but beneath this show of solidarity lies contradiction. While the US Congress builds a stable, bipartisan architecture of deterrence, US President Donald Trump repeatedly undercuts it through erratic decisions and transactional diplomacy. This dissonance not only weakens the US’ credibility abroad — it also fractures public trust within Taiwan. For decades,
In 1976, the Gang of Four was ousted. The Gang of Four was a leftist political group comprising Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members: Jiang Qing (江青), its leading figure and Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) last wife; Zhang Chunqiao (張春橋); Yao Wenyuan (姚文元); and Wang Hongwen (王洪文). The four wielded supreme power during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but when Mao died, they were overthrown and charged with crimes against China in what was in essence a political coup of the right against the left. The same type of thing might be happening again as the CCP has expelled nine top generals. Rather than a
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) on Saturday won the party’s chairperson election with 65,122 votes, or 50.15 percent of the votes, becoming the second woman in the seat and the first to have switched allegiance from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to the KMT. Cheng, running for the top KMT position for the first time, had been termed a “dark horse,” while the biggest contender was former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), considered by many to represent the party’s establishment elite. Hau also has substantial experience in government and in the KMT. Cheng joined the Wild Lily Student
Taipei stands as one of the safest capital cities the world. Taiwan has exceptionally low crime rates — lower than many European nations — and is one of Asia’s leading democracies, respected for its rule of law and commitment to human rights. It is among the few Asian countries to have given legal effect to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Social Economic and Cultural Rights. Yet Taiwan continues to uphold the death penalty. This year, the government has taken a number of regressive steps: Executions have resumed, proposals for harsher prison sentences
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