We learned yesterday that President Chen Shui-bian (
And we hardly think we fall into the category of biased unification-supporting media, whose mem-bers were all trained by the KMT, who were censured by the DPP's Hong Chi-chang (
What we remember in the last three years has been the economy dipping, not Chen's fault but not sufficiently refuted by the DPP at the time, the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant fiasco, utterly mis-managed by the DPP, despite their many years of manipulating popular support when in opposition, the farmers and fisherman's associations turnaround, still to be resolved, the embarrassing backpedaling over Chen's "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait remarks, half-baked privatization, hubris over SARS -- about the only thing we could come up with as an unequivocal plus was that China hasn't invaded yet.
Even Chen yesterday was limited to saying that Taiwan's economy hadn't done as badly as others. What a slogan!
Given this lackluster performance, the best we can hope for is that Chen doesn't say anything too embarrassing. What is more to the point is that if Chen must be the DPP's candidate in the next election -- as the incumbent he could hardly be otherwise -- how his campaign can possibly be rescued from the mediocrity tending toward failure of his performance in office. A strong running mate might be an advantage, someone perhaps like Chen Ding-nan (
If the green camp hopes to focus on Chen's achievements for its election campaign then it is in trouble -- it might as well try to breath in a vacuum. There is only one reason to vote for Chen and that is that he is not about to sell out Taiwan to China, the all-but-expressed intention of his blue-camp rivals with their love of the "one China" policy. For the green camp the campaign has to be negative -- this is sad but inevitable.
What Taiwanese have to be asked to make is what is known in the rich lexicon of American politics as a clothes-peg vote, a vote that stinks so badly you need a clothes-peg on your nose as you make it. Chen might be vacillating, he might lack direction, but at least we know he is not going in one particular direction -- into China's crushing embrace. That is where the blue camp would lead us, bringing all the loss of liberties now threatening the people of Hong Kong to the people of Taiwan.
It is not that Chen must be supported, rather that China must be held at bay. This must be made crystal clear to voters, no matter what accusations of "dirty fighting" there might be. For Taiwan's liberties and democratic system this is a life-or-death struggle. The only strategy that matters is the one that works.
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