A few weeks ago we castigated the French government over its eagerness to facilitate the sale of advanced weapons to the tyranny across the Taiwan Strait. A number of people took issue with us, claiming that it was unfair to denigrate the entire French nation on the basis of its arms-sales policy. The only response we need make to that is to point out that it is our lives -- the lives of people in Taiwan -- which are being deliberately endangered by the French government, and frankly we don't find this very amusing. Our French critics might consider how they would feel were Taiwan to make money out of selling weapons and explosives to Islamic terrorists in France.
But just when you think French behavior cannot get any more contemptible, it plunges to a new low. With much of the rest of the world appalled by China's "Anti-Secession" Law and its avowed intention to oppose Taiwanese self-determination using force, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has given his blessing to this instrument of state terror and intimidation. "The Anti-Secession Law," he said, "is completely compatible with the position of France." Very probably, though it would take a proctologist to locate exactly where that position is.
When we suggested that the government take punitive measures against French institutions, businesses and expatriates in Taiwan to show its deep displeasure, our critics claimed that a nation's citizens cannot be held accountable for the actions of their government. With some nations that is certainly true. Nobody claims that the luckless denizens of Myanmar can be held responsible for the doings of the junta there. But France was -- the last we heard -- a democracy. If democracy works, then the French government is a representation of the will of French people, and as such the people are accountable. Those who find their government's policy unpalatable should not be protesting their innocence to this newspaper but doing their damnedest -- through the constitutional means at their disposal -- to change that policy or change the government. Democratic accountability works in two directions.
Apply this principle to Taiwan, however, and the prospects are rather bleak. On Thursday, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), made a fire-and-brimstone speech castigating opposition party leaders' upcoming trips to China as the wrong action in the wrong place at the wrong time. The principal drawback of such visits is that they give the international community the impression that Taiwan does not object to the Anti-Secession Law. The ferocity of Lee's words was immediately blunted, however, by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who gave his conditional blessing to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) trip, after his government had spent the last three weeks condemning it. This about-face is typical of the Chen government -- both of its vacillating nature and its execrable timing. But in the end the problem goes back to democratic accountability. Chen is not sure what he wants because the Taiwanese are not sure what they want.
The dominant personality trait among Taiwanese is opportunism. For the last three centuries, bettering the lot of oneself and one's family usually meant some kind of messy compromise with unaccountable and alien power holders. The moral has always been to seek advantage where one can, and don't pay too much attention to principle. And that, unfortunately, is the way the trips to China are viewed. The overwhelming sentiment is that Lien could bring something back for us; if so, why not let him try? Given such opportunism, Chen is in no position to be doctrinaire. His wishy-washiness simply reflects the wishy-washiness of his constituents. Sadly, this is the last quality one needs in standing up to China.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
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