While many believe that Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
The purported reason for the youth corps is to inject new blood into the party to boost reform. This is a straight rip-off of the China Youth Corps, founded by late president Chiang Ching-kuo (
The media recently dubbed the KMT's youth corps the "clique of princes," as its senior members include former chairman Lien Chan's (
This is almost a replica of the situation in China, in which sons and daughters of powerful fathers used their family position to gain access to political and commercial power.
Ma recently said he hoped that "the youth corps might produce another Hu Jintao (
Such elitism can also be found among the pan-blue camp members who are chomping at the bit to become Taipei mayor: KMT legislators John Chiang (
The Democratic Progressive Party's association of the names of contenders for the party's Taipei mayoral nomination with that of former dictator Chiang Kai-shek (
Growing up in a family that has been politically powerful for generations is a great education, and the inheritance of family resources makes it easier for the next generation to make its mark in the political arena. The question of how the KMT wants to realign its power structure and train its new leaders is for the party itself to decide. Relying on nepotism to create a small clique of leaders, however, is behavior befitting a totalitarian system, regardless of whether or not it might produce outstanding leaders.
More participation by the broader public would result in the promotion of more talented politicians through free competition. The exclusion of the average party member will only further disappoint the KMT's grassroots supporters.
If the KMT's new youth corps is nothing more than a platform for the political training of the next generation of party nobility, then this will be a step backward for the party.
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