Jerome Keating's article ("Democracy, the KMT and reality," Feb 7, page 8) makes a number of good points. Most significantly, it highlights how the promise of defending and maintaining Taiwan's still weak democracy must become the first and most important element of any presidential candidate's manifesto for 2008.
In trying to steer debate away from the issue of independence, former president Lee Tung Hui's (
Any debate on the so-called "independence" plays Taiwan's democracy into the hands of China, whose internal pressures require its elites to use specifically the Taiwan issue to bolster their own authority. China presents a danger precisely because its embattled leaders can use war as a diversionary and nationalistic strategy.
Taiwan is the trigger China intends to use as part of such a strategy. Declaring formal independence would allow China to take advantage of it as Taiwan is clearly (to China) a provocative action that ruptures the imaginary "status quo."
The pro-independence campaign could therefore be accused of being naive or manipulated by Chinese leaders, who hope for the day when a justification for war is delivered into their hands.
Keating and Lee are sensible in asking for the debate to move toward the maintenance of democracy, an objective that should not generate any reasonable opposition from the international community.
Taiwan is independent. It's now time to fight for the democracy that the KMT seemingly finds so expendable.
Ben Goren
Doliou
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
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry