“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ [危機] is composed of two characters — one represents danger and the other represents opportunity,” former US president John F. Kennedy said.
The quote surely comes as an apt description of the situation currently facing embattled Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), who’s been engulfed in a controversy over seemingly dubious ties between the police and the underworld and questionable police integrity following a shooting on May 28, in which four Taichung police officers were found at the scene yet failed to intervene.
While a recent poll conducted by the United Daily News suggested the incident has impacted Hu’s approval rating, which took a dip of 9 percentage points, the truth of the matter is that he could easily have tried to translate a tough stance on crime into votes for his November re-election bid.
How? By exercising determination and getting to the bottom of the incident with transparency and impartiality regardless of who may be involved. Sadly, Hu has failed miserably despite repeated pledges to crack down on crime in the city.
As the result of slow action from Hu’s government, the incident has turned it into a national guessing game with many members of the public questioning the police investigation and mounting speculation over whether ranking officials were involved in some sort of conspiracy behind the shooting.
Hu’s incompetence is evident by the fact that it took the Taichung City Police Department a full 10 days after the killing to release a surveillance tape of the incident on Monday night. The delay in making the tapes public raises questions about the police investigation, but the fact that they were incomplete also fuels suspicion that the police have something to hide.
The surveillance footage revealed the four police officers were indeed playing mahjong at the time, contrary to the police department’s statement that they were not present. If the officers lied about that, one cannot but wonder what else they might be concealing.
Also, why has no sketch of the suspect been released even though his image was caught on tape? Again, the police’s mysterious delay on the issue has led the public to question whether there are “inconvenient truths” behind the case.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this incident is the possibility that the supposed forces of justice are playing for the other side.
In light of the way Hu and his government have handled the case, some Taichung residents may be wondering whether Hu deserves their support in November. Be that as it may, Hu’s term is not over yet, which means he is responsibile for the maintenance of public order in the city, weeding out unfit police officers and saving residents from a crime-rampant nightmare.
One way to put mounting suspicions surrounding the case to rest is for the police department to take timely and transparent action to get to the bottom of the matter regardless of the consequences and punish the officers involved.
Hu must make sure the police department takes action before the incompetent city government makes a difficult situation worse by further fueling negative impressions of the city police’s work ethnic and integrity.
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
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS