During his election campaign in 2000, President Chen Shui-bian (
I then wrote a note that I asked Lee to give to Chen, saying: "Building a new country is more important than winning the presidency."
It really isn't very important to be president, especially not in the kind of extended settler state known as "the Republic of China."
I really do not care very much about whether the president steps down or not, but the fact that I am not participating in the ongoing efforts to force him out of office does not mean that I support him.
To be blunt, during his six years in office, Chen has not put all his efforts into building a new country. Instead, his "Four Noes" policy and his statement that those participating in the campaign to create a new constitution and change the nation's title were deceiving themselves have made me very resentful, and I have criticized him for it.
I have been particularly angered by the increasingly Chinese Nationalist Party-like (KMT) demeanor of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Good examples of this behavior can be seen in the alleged corruption of presidential aide Chen Che-nan (
The attempts by the pan-blue camp to recall Chen are not a new phenomenon. The only difference is that this time, they have found a righteous slogan: "anti-corruption."
I will never be able to believe that the KMT is working against corruption, because their own ranks are full of it. If we counted the number of corruption cases or the amounts involved, the cases the KMT has been involved in would always outnumber those of the DPP.
In the end, the KMT is engaging in political warfare -- in cooperation with their fellow travelers in the media -- trying to destroy the image of the localized government in order to restore their old regime.
With this basic understanding, it is of course impossible for me to follow up on the failed recall motion by joining hands with the pan-green academics in a continued attempt to accomplish the pan-blue camp's unfinished undertaking. It would be even more impossible for me to get up on stage with former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh (施明德) and let him use me as his tool, especially after having found that this group of people is filled with those looking for publicity, a platform or benefits. My craving for clean government demands that I not condescend to mixing with these people.
This group of people who want the president to step down of course also includes some of my friends, and I don't doubt their idealism. Their focus on one issue, however, differs from my habit of looking at overall strategy. The nation has many unsettled accounts from the last 50-odd years, but the group only focuses on the "greed" that surrounds the president. This seems to be quite disproportionate.
I also want these idealistic friends of mine to ask Shih why he didn't support our side during the past few years when we have been under vicious attack by the pan-blue camp, in which they and their communist backers have worked to destroy the cause of Taiwanese independence. Why is Shih now instead standing on the side of the pan-blue camp and calling on the president to step down?
In a letter to President Chen, Shih said that he had once asked the president to guarantee that he would insist that "Taiwan is a sovereign and independent state, and never retreat from that point of view." Shih also asked the president to insist that "the people of Taiwan have the right to decide their own future, and will never give up that right."
Will Shih be able to ask the people making donations to his anti-Chen campaign -- and the media that support him -- to insist on these same principles?
Finally, I would like to ask if the president's resignation would mean that the pan-blue camp will let the Legislative Yuan discuss the arms procurement bill. Will they be able to stop opposing and blocking the government's every move? Will the KMT return the national assets it has stolen? Will it stop colluding with the Chinese Communists? These are issues that should also be considered when we talk about whether President Chen should step down.
If he really does step down, I want him to pass my note on to Vice President Annette Lu (
Lee Hsiao-feng is a professor of history at Shih Hsin University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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