Mapping a grim future
Only seven months into the new government’s administration, it appears that the monolithic party-state of the 1945-1996 era has been reanimated, albeit dressed in the emperor’s new clothes. If there was the slightest movement toward a separation of powers during the Chen administration, the direction now is away from it, and at a gallop.
Unacceptable is the barefaced arrogance of refusing to take responsibility for errors such as the Maokong Gondola fiasco, wasting money on again renaming the Post Office, police removing the national flag to please Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), the kangaroo court/media trial of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the obviously politicized and grossly mishandled prosecutions of Democratic Progressive Party officials and the astounding insouciance of foreign interloper Diane Lee (李慶安) in the face of concrete evidence of her mendacity and fraud.
Rule of law in Taiwan is undermined when the most senior and authoritative leaders not only breach basic standards of political ethics but also adopt a diversionary strategy of denial and tit-for-tat mudslinging, especially when guilt is almost incontrovertible.
Most offensive, though, is the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) mission to “localize” Taiwan and downgrade its national sovereignty, heedless of the wishes of a majority of residents. “Regional President” Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) absurd and unsupportable claim that Taiwan is a region of the Republic of China (ROC) that includes China and Mongolia is a clear attempt to “internalize” the “Taiwan issue” within a China framework as a prelude to the merging of Chinese and ROC administrative borders and jurisdictions.
J.B. Harley describes a map as a partisan assertion on the nature of space concealed beneath a veneer of representational veracity, an assertion often deployed to subject space to particular social and commercial interests.
Both Japanese and ROC occupations of Taiwan are classic examples of hegemonic cadres attempting to impose a map upon a territory by force in the hope that, given enough time, it will reify into permanent economic, cultural and political institutions.
It is the ongoing tragedy of Taiwan that foreign powers such as China, the US and the KMT continue to refuse to allow the Taiwanese to choose for themselves. In 2006, Ma stated that it was his goal “to shape domestic conditions for unification and plant the unification idea deep in every sector of society in order to move from an anti-independence strategy toward a pro-unification push.” Evidence suggests that this process is well under way.
The KMT is pursuing peace at any cost regardless of the wishes of the electorate, whose sense of “local-national” belonging the party seems to regard with contempt and disdain. One can only hope that a semblance of democracy, human rights and self-determination remains by the next presidential election in 2012, or at least enough for Taiwanese to be able to repair the damage caused to their nation, state and sovereignty by the actions of greedy, short-sighted, reckless and blithe champagne-swilling surrender-pandas.
Here’s to the hope of a happier new year.
BEN GOREN
Taihsi, Yunlin County
No more tantrums
I have been reading and appreciating the Taipei Times for several years, but your recent editorial (“China’s growing leverage on Israel” Dec. 30, page 8) appalled me.
Your statement, “as has happened countless times since the first Intifada, with full US backing, Israel feels no compunction in razing neighborhoods or killing innocent people in its efforts to defend itself” shows not merely an ideological bias, which is acceptable in an editorial, but a scholarly laziness and ignorance that is inexcusable for a newspaper that purports to be Taiwan’s newspaper of record.
You write as if Israel were a monolith. Is it your contention that hundreds of civil society and aid organizations, which include martial as well as peaceful extremists, every soldier, every member of parliament, every government agency and all 7 million citizens of Israel (one third of whom are of Arab ethnicity) are all as cold-hearted as you have described them in one meager sentence?
I would go further and ask what the purpose of your editorial is. Is it to condemn Israeli “aggression” or make a reasoned argument on the relationship between Israel and China?
You would do service to your readers by providing balanced perspectives on one of the world’s most complex sociopolitical conflicts instead of using your editorial to throw tantrums.
HOWARD WESTON
Taipei
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS