Reading the article written by Wu Yi-ju ("Taiwan's needs must be put above the DPP's," Feb. 9, page 12), I am wondering how Wu can claim that "polls uniformly indicate that most people support the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant"
Contrary to Wu's argument that President Chen Shui-bian's (
A nuclear accident caused by human error or an earthquake would be devastating to our dense population in Taiwan, causing mass fatalities. It is only common sense to ensure public safety before considering whether we have enough electricity. Don't you agree, Wu?
Shultz Lu
Atlanta, Georgia
Pop culture panic
A recent article which focused on the exchange of popular culture and its effect on Taiwan, offered a telling and wider picture of alarmists adopting cultural xenophobia under the guise of "national reflection." Writing in reaction to the growing influx of Japanese "teen idols" in Taiwan, Chen Chao-Ju's
Indeed, popular culture can, in some social-academic circles, be treated as a commodity -- something to be assessed, theorized, capitalized or produced. Yet, when it becomes a matter of delineating cultural territory and patrolling its borders, in an effort to screen the type of "popular" commodities that might leak through cultural customs, the agenda becomes apparent.
I find it strangely comical that popular culture is now given a ledger in some Taiwanese theorists' book-keeping of popular culture, as if it should and could be tallied. I'm fearful that, tongue-in-cheek, local and/or national cultural unions will soon emerge from the woodwork to picket the unfair and "unbalanced cultural export[s]," comparable to the trade unions in the US who rallied and lobbied for tighter import restrictions on plastic consumer products. Instead of "Save us, V6!" imagine the more perverse slogan: "Save our jobs! Save our traditional cultural fetishes!"
My suspicion is that Taiwanese teens are simply reacting to popular culture as young people around the world would: in a state of hyperactivity and hormone-regulated desire to do, follow, acquire and appropriate popular things. Thus, I remain puzzled as to how this pseudo-phenomenon (V6) could be described as "irrational," or even how it could be discussed among moralists. Can we suppose, then, that rational behavior is connected to moral action? If so, then one could suppose that every nation is filled with irrational and immoral citizens. This, of course, is highly probable.
Sydney Wong
Lukang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
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
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs