Permanent visas not so
For many reasons I am intrigued by the initiative of Apollo Chen (陳學聖) to try and obtain permanent residence for those foreigners who apparently "love Taiwan" but not enough to want to stay here for more than nine months a year -- or more precisely -- seven consecutive years if they are not married to a Taiwanese citizen ("Lawmakers support new visas," Jan. 24, page 2).
Those of us who have truly proven our love of Taiwan and already gained permanent residence status must warn the 20-plus a year aspirants that under present rules permanent residence will most likely not be of benefit to them unless they learn to love Taiwan more.
Currently "permanent" is a misnomer; if in any single calendar year a permanent resident fails to remain in Taiwan for more than six months, then, for the following year, that person needs to obtain a residence visa in the usual manner and their permanent residence is worth precisely nought. If they then wish to re-establish their permanent status, they must once again serve a continuous seven-year sentence with only three months per annum of time out.
It should be said that Chen's proposal would at least admit a degree of permanence for 20-year residents who have a 10-year good attendance record, but if he really cares for the plight of foreigners who love Taiwan then Chen should direct his efforts towards amending the regulations so that permanent residence is truly permanent. He should not waste time on stunts which more than likely will finally prove to be of little benefit to anybody, except perhaps himself.
Nick Carvel
Taipei
AP stories US propaganda?
It was surprising to find little mention of the bloody massacre by US forces of Somali civilians in the two Associated Press articles, "Somalia still causes shivers in the US" and "Somalia Syndrome casts a shadow over US anti-terrorism effort," (Jan. 22, page 9).
In a new account of the battle in Mogadishu, collated from hours of interviews with US and Somali survivors, Mark Bowden of the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that US troops abandoned their rules of engagement -- to fire only when threatened by fire -- and shot down every Somali they saw, including women and children.
According to Bowden's account, US troops took hostages and murdered wounded Somalis. They also used the bodies of Somalis as barri-cades. At the time, the world's media concentrated on dramatic TV footage of the naked bodies of US soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and the drama of a helicopter pilot taken hostage. The Somali dead were reported as a kind of sideshow and estimated at about 200. Bowden, however, quotes Ambassador Robert Oakley, the US special representative to Somalia, as saying that more than 1,000 Somalis were killed.
Perhaps this sanitized rewriting of history in Somalia by AP is merely symptomatic of a wider trend in current journalism which slavishly echoes the Pentagon's justifications of civilian deaths in Afghanistan as somehow "necessary" and "unavoidable" while endlessly broadcasting images of "Ground Zero" and homages to the innocent victims of the Sept. 11th attacks.
Indeed, conservative estimates show that US and British pilots have murdered over 3,500 civilians in Afghanistan, including women, children and elderly people -- innocent people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.
As US military spending reaches more than US$343 billion per year, 69 percent greater than those of the next five highest-spending nations combined, we should not forget what Martin Luther King Jr had to say about the US in 1967, during the Vietnam War: "My government is the world's leading purveyor of violence."
Is Somalia going to be the new front in the US-led war on terror, with its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its degrading and inhumane treatment of prisoners of war and its hypocritical support for dictatorial regimes? If so, as US troops jackboot their way around a world laid to waste by US foreign policy and its merciless economic agenda, let us ask ourselves whether it is so unusual that some people strike back?
Richard Green
Taipei
Tzeng paying the price
Your editorial about outgoing minister of education Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) ("Flunking out of the Cabinet," Jan. 28, page 8) was on the mark -- he should have stumped for the DPP and he should have displayed a better team spirit. But there were two other big reasons for his unpopularity in the Cabinet which you failed to address. And on both of them, he was right and his masters were wrong.
First, Taiwan's top educational priority should not be the "localization" of its textbooks. It should be teaching its children to think creatively and apolitically, rather than focus on rote memorization techniques and obedience to a political manifesto. Tzeng made huge strides toward achieving this, as evidenced by the backlash he encountered among vested interests.
Second, Taiwan's choice for a Romanization system is an international joke. In refusing to endorse the Tongyong Pinyin (
Moreover, besides having had the advantage of being right, what should have saved Tzeng at the end of the day was that he was popular. This is something which any premier in a "mature system of government" would treasure, especially one facing a majority opposition in the legislature. Why do you suppose British Prime Minister Tony Blair tolerates his overtly ambitious Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown?
Indeed, there is a place for mavericks in any Cabinet. What is really worrying, though, is that the only colleague of Tzeng's who had fared as consistently well in opinion polls was Minis-ter of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南). If Chen suddenly starts to hem and haw at suggestions from Cabinet "soulmates" that prosecutors follow a more "localized" approach to rooting out corruption, would you suggest he be replaced too?
Anthony Lawrance
Taipei
When I visited Taiwan last summer, I called on the nation to use its status as a technology superpower to build superweapons. It is obvious to me as I return a year later that Taiwan is now answering that call. By 2030, Taiwan envisions a domestic drone hub, capable of producing large quantities of drones per year. The nation continues to tighten cooperation across the private sector, scientific researchers and the elected government, on creating new and innovative production avenues for defense, while efforts to become central to the “democratic supply chain” are only increasing. Anduril is seeing all of these positive
Singaporean former Prime Minister and current senior minister Lee Hsien- Loong(李顯龍) last month stood on Chinese soil and told Beijing that Singapore cooperates because of “shared interests”, not because of common “ethnic descent,” a significant statement that has upended China’s cognitive warfare tactics of “ethnic nationalism.” Along with using its military buildup and economic growth to expand its international dominance, China has long deployed ethnic politics to promote the idea that all ethnic Chinese around the world, regardless of citizenship, share a tight bond with the Chinese motherland, by which it means the regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in San Francisco on Tuesday last week said if she had not met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), she would have been “just a plain” and “even negligible” KMT chairperson, bluntly signaling the role she is playing in her visit to the US — Beijing’s messenger from Taiwan. Cheng and her delegation arrived in the US on Monday last week for a two-week visit across five major cities. Her party said the group is scheduled to meet with US lawmakers, officials, policy experts and businesspeople. Before departing, Cheng said her trip
In 1935, the German Reich led by the National Socialist Party officially created the Nuremberg Race Laws, a “legal cage”, for German Jews, stripping them of citizenship, criminalizing their personal relationships, barring them from public life, and transforming them into stateless subjects and isolating them from the rest of society. Similarly, in March 2026, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) National People’s Congress adopted the “Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress” law, which represents the most significant shift in Chinese domestic governance since the era of Mao Zedong (毛澤東). Ostensibly designed as domestic legislation to manage China’s 56 officially recognized ethnic groups,
RSS