In some regards, it is a dangerous world. A tsunami hit southeastern Asia just several months ago, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people; in less than a month, several severe earthquakes have struck Japan.
Nature has shown a cruel face, but nothing could be bloodier and more brutal than our internecine wars.
Never forget that we can hardly find innocent people on earth. Is there any nation or ethnic group that is qualified to claim that neither they nor their forefathers had anything to do with invasions? In cases where no apology has yet been made, we do owe it to each other to say, "I'm so sorry."
That's what I felt when I saw huge anti-Japanese demonstrations erupting in China again. The protesters complained of Japan's use of cunning descriptions to disguise its war crimes in textbooks, and demanded apologies. I've been hearing the Chinese asking for an apology from Japan ever since I was very young. The Japanese have apologized, in delicate diplomatic language, but also in abundant official development assistance. However, it seems the Chinese are never satisfied. Itself a repeat offender, China is always demanding one more apology.
How can China deny that its people have been involved in repeated invasions? Everyone knows the ancient Chinese lived in a relatively small area along the Yellow River. Is China going to tell us that all its current territories have been annexed peacefully?
It is easy to find examples in history books of Chinese troops crossing the border, conquering and slaughtering. The descendants of the victims have spread over almost all of east and central Asia, even Europe, depending on your definition of "China" and which purported Chinese dynasty is part of Chinese history and which is not.
China does owe apologies to a lot of nations. The Chinese are also covering up their forefathers' war crimes in their own textbooks. China has never offered any official development assistance to anyone as a form of apology.
Why is the repeat offender, China, always demanding an apology from Japan without even mentioning its saber-rattling toward Taiwan?
Lau Seng-hian
Taipei County
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers