President Chen Shui-bian's (
The Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) recent ad in the Liberty Times, the Taipei Times' sister paper, declared that the public have the option to choose independence for Taiwan, unification with China or to maintain the status quo. Although KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Similarly, when Chen declared that the NUC and the national unification guidelines will cease to function, he also eliminated a preconceived idea, determined for the public by the previous KMT government. This is a manifestation of the democratic spirit. The change is only a recognition of possibilities that may lead to changes in the future -- there is no need for the international community to fret over the matter.
There is certainly a degree of conflict between Chen's announcement that the NUC and the guidelines will cease to function and the "four noes" he outlined in his inauguration speeches in 2000 and 2004, and that hurts his credibility. In both speeches, however, Chen stressed that his promise was made on the condition that China renounce the use of force against Taiwan -- a fact that has often been ignored. As China aims an increasing number of missiles at Taiwan, the premise on which the "four noes" were predicated has ceased to exist. Still, the US and the international community continue to ignore China's ongoing changes to the "status quo," preferring instead to place Taiwan's actions under the microscope. This is entirely unreasonable.
Beijing has frequently criticized Chen's intentions to abolish the NUC and the guidelines, despite doing nothing to achieve the goals they outline: cross-strait exchanges and, eventually, direct links. Instead, Beijing works constantly to isolate Taiwan in the international community, repeatedly blocks its bids to enter the World Health Organization and has passed the "Anti-Secession" Law. These actions cause only resentment in Taiwan -- China has done nothing to bring the two sides closer together. When the Taiwanese government was willing to discuss cross-strait flights and tourism, Beijing refused to negotiate.
In truth, China has never cared about the guidelines, for it wants only unconditional surrender. Taiwan, however, refuses to surrender and has now rejected the unification guidelines, causing China to lose face -- the real source of Beijing's displeasure.
By announcing that the NUC and the guidelines will "cease to function," rather than be "abolished," Chen has tried to achieve a political compromise. The president has moved in the right direction, but the timing is unfortunate. The right time to make the announcement would have been during his 2000 inauguration.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS