Because of the limited size of Nauru's international airport, some sections of the Taiwanese media were unable to accompany President Chen Shui-bian (
Reporters from a certain cable TV station reportedly decided to display their dissatisfaction by boycotting the whole trip. This kind of righteous indignation is fair enough, but I am more interested in the insight this episode provides on the sorry state of Taiwan's diplomatic affairs.
Why is it that Taiwan is so diplomatically limited that we have to treasure a presidential visit to a country where only two aircraft can land at the national airport at any given time?
Why is it so difficult for Taiwan to participate in the international community?
The reason is that the Republic of China (ROC) withdrew from the UN 35 years ago this Oct. 26. As a result of this decision, our head of state must deal with Chinese pressure every time he makes an international visit; the WHO is bullied by China; the US is the only nation that dares sell Taiwan arms; and Taiwan has to endure humiliation by APEC.
I have never seen a well balanced report of this situation in the Taiwanese media. In the past, the propaganda machine of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government's educational system taught us that, to save face, the government had no choice but to walk out of the UN -- that the world body was not big enough to hold both the People's Republic of China and the ROC.
Historical documents, however, show that the dictator Chiang Kai-shek (
In 1970, the year before the ROC withdrew from the UN, then US president Richard Nixon promised in a meeting with then premier Yan Chia-kan (
Even French president Charles de Gaulle sent a telegram to Chiang urging him not to make a rash decision to leave the world body.
To save face, Chiang said that he'd rather stand on principle than accept humiliation, preferring to instead turn Taiwan into an orphan in the international community. Abandoned, oppressed and threatened by Chinese missiles, the Taiwanese people are now constantly in crisis.
In their eagerness to punish Chen for his family's perceived wrongdoings, many academics have lately been talking about transitional justice. As I see it, true transitional justice entails settling past injustices. Yet in the current debate, the buck surprisingly stops at former president Lee Teng-hui (
No one has the courage to challenge the institutional violence applied by Chiang. Despite Chiang's betrayal of the nation, even a change to the name of an airport bearing his name is today enough to set off a nationwide argument.
The fact that Chiang was a dictator is irrefutable, and changing the name of the airport in Taoyuan would be in keeping with the spirit of transitional justice.
Why don't I hear the same people who have been singing the praises of transitional justice come out in support of this change?
Tien Chiu-chin is a Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
Translated by Perry Svensson
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
The inter-Korean relationship, long defined by national division, offers the clearest mirror within East Asia for cross-strait relations. Yet even there, reunification language is breaking down. The South Korean government disclosed on Wednesday last week that North Korea’s constitutional revision in March had deleted references to reunification and added a territorial clause defining its border with South Korea. South Korea is also seriously debating whether national reunification with North Korea is still necessary. On April 27, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung marked the eighth anniversary of the Panmunjom Declaration, the 2018 inter-Korean agreement in which the two Koreas pledged to
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is often accused of getting close to, and even conspiring with, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). There are certainly good reasons behind these accusations, yet the confounding truth is that it makes neither historical nor logical sense for it to do so. Whether one believes that the Chinese civil war fought between the KMT and CCP in the previous century has ended or has yet to be resolved, the KMT’s retreat to Taiwan in 1949 resulted in the CCP governing China and the KMT taking root in Taiwan. For years, the KMT refused to even
RSS