In a country where ancestor worship is an essential part of the culture, paying respect to the dead should not surprise us. Objections to the recent visit by Taiwan Solidarity Union Chairman Shu Chin-chiang (蘇進強) to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine to do so, however, does. It is based on the reasoning that Chinese can pay respect to the Republic of China's dead in China and set up shrines to them in Taiwan, but Taiwanese cannot respect those who fell for the former colonial power, Japan.
The absolutist and exclusivist notion of the pan-blue camp that only they can pay respect to their dead reeks of the desecration of royal tombs by incoming dynasties in China. The Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) bedfellow, failed abysmally to do away with such feudalistic tendencies with their Cultural Revolution. Here, one would hope that the cultural transformation to democracy would have relegated such a mindset to the trashcan of wacky old ways.
Alas! The pan-blues are still suffering deep psychological dissociation from the reality of what constitutes the Taiwanese electorate and what democracy actually means. For the sake of the nation, they need urgent psychological help to get closure about losing the civil war, being a nasty colonial power, losing two presidential elections, being the opposition and not being in China, free or otherwise.
William Meldrum
Taipei
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US