When I was told I should prepare for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) winning the presidential election in March, I acknowledged that it was a possibility. I pointed out that once the KMT takes hold of Taiwan, it would use the nation as a lever, trading sovereignty for some opportunity to get into China.
After all, for the past 50 years, Taiwan has been nothing more to the KMT than a piggy bank and parking space, as the party's dream has always been to return to China.
For the other half of Taiwan, there is no going "back." There is only here. The problem is "here" never seems to be enough. Many Taiwanese long to be part of something bigger, something powerful. This accounts in some way for the strange fascination and appreciation that some have for developments at the hands of the Japanese colonialists -- if they could overlook the death, destruction and cultural genocide the Japanese wrought.
By the same token, some Taiwanese appreciate the KMT dictatorship for the contributions the party had made to the economy and industrial development. However, they do not welcome the prejudice, the racism and the derogatory attitude toward people considered "too Taiwanese" that persists to this day.
So what are we faced with? Two months from the election, and we still don't know what KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
All of this will be done at the expense of Taiwan. After all, Taiwan is merely a bargaining chip, something to be thrown in as part of some deal -- a deal that may already have been made. For the KMT, Taiwan is not something of value, not a place to stay in, but only a place worth leaving. And with Ma comes the opportunity to finally find a place in the sun in China once again.
Yes, cross-strait tensions will lessen, but only because a Ma administration will have moved toward surrendering Taiwan's sovereignty.
Perhaps the KMT will agree to outlaw the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Perhaps the KMT will use its majority to adopt China's "Anti-Secession" Law in Taiwan and use it to suppress any talk of independence.
Perhaps once again talk of independence will become a crime and DPP members may become targets of arrest.
Taiwan will once again become a one-party town. And it will no longer be Taiwan. It will become Chinese Taipei, an island built around a city.
With the lowering of all barriers to investment in China, Taiwan will lose all of its industry to China and become the Honolulu of China, a mere tourist island, where international fame comes from its betelnut beauties.
For many people, that may be the only job left, after all the high-tech jobs have fled to China.
I don't know if all of these will happen or not. But if Taiwanese were to elect the KMT, giving it a legislative majority and the presidency, they will be voting for their own demise.
Lee Long-hwa
New York
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
Reports about Elon Musk planning his own semiconductor fab have sparked anxiety, with some warning that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) could lose key customers to vertical integration. A closer reading suggests a more measured conclusion: Musk is advancing a strategic vision of in-house chip manufacturing, but remains far from replacing the existing foundry ecosystem. For TSMC, the short-term impact is limited; the medium-term challenge lies in supply diversification and pricing pressure, only in the long term could it evolve into a structural threat. The clearest signal is Musk’s announcement that Tesla and SpaceX plan to develop a fab project dubbed “Terafab”
Most schoolchildren learn that the circumference of the Earth is about 40,000km. They do not learn that the global economy depends on just 160 of those kilometers. Blocking two narrow waterways — the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait — could send the economy back in time, if not to the Stone Age that US President Donald Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran back to, then at least to the mid-20th century, before the Rolling Stones first hit the airwaves. Over the past month and a half, Iran has turned the Strait of Hormuz, which is about 39km wide at
The ongoing Middle East crisis has reinforced an uncomfortable truth for Taiwan: In an increasingly interconnected and volatile world, distant wars rarely remain distant. What began as a regional confrontation between the US, Israel and Iran has evolved into a strategic shock wave reverberating far beyond the Persian Gulf. For Taiwan, the consequences are immediate, material and deeply unsettling. From Taipei’s perspective, the conflict has exposed two vulnerabilities — Taiwan’s dependence on imported energy and the risks created when Washington’s military attention is diverted. Together, they offer a preview of the pressures Taiwan might increasingly face in an era of overlapping geopolitical
RSS