As with every major display of public dissatisfaction in recent years, yesterday’s demonstrations in Taipei and Kaohsiung against the policies of the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration led to wildly variable speculation about the number of people who showed up. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which organized the protests, claims 600,000 participants in Taipei and 200,000 in Kaohsiung, while law-enforcement authorities put those numbers at about 50,000 and 30,000 respectively.
Different parties inevitably seek to manipulate, and thereby politicize, the estimates of turnouts at demonstrations. Accurate or not, crowd numbers nevertheless serve as indicators of the level of proactive, popular opposition to government policies — in this case, the opposition sees them as endangering the sovereignty of Taiwan.
The National Police Agency (NPA) said on Sunday that it deployed 2,000 police officers in Taipei and 800 in Kaohsiung (excluding forces on standby).
The deployment on Sunday was therefore relatively low-key. (The ratio at Times Square in New York City on New Year’s Eve is usually 1:20 and was 1:17 during anti-war demonstrations there in 2003.)
This illustrates that the Ma administration, the Ministry of the Interior and the NPA have learned from their mistakes during the November visit of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), when a large police presence — 2,000 at the airport, 800 at Chen’s hotel and 7,000 altogether — served as a catalyst for public anger.
As a result, demonstrations over the weekend were for the most part orderly and both sides respected the rules of engagement.
Both camps issued clear instructions and cautioned against overreaction and provocative behavior. Notwithstanding an incident involving a police vehicle, both performed commendably and showed that with restraint, public discontent can be freely expressed in a democracy.
Memories of bloody clashes in November may also have subdued passions on both sides.
Ironically for the DPP, the orderliness that characterized the demonstrations could make it easier for the Ma administration to ignore its efforts and downplay the importance of the rallies.
The last thing Ma and others want as they forge ahead with their cross-strait policies is more international attention.
By making sure that things would not get out of hand, the authorities ensured that the demonstration remained a very local one in news terms — and this they accomplished with brio.
By claiming that far fewer demonstrators showed up at the protests than the DPP expected, the Ma administration will again be in a position to say that the majority of Taiwanese agree with his policies on China and that there is no need for more transparency or referendums. In other words, May 17 will be easy to sweep under the carpet and Ma can stay the course.
The DPP and police played by the rules. The Ma administration did not bite. Democracy worked to perfection, but in so doing it muted the opposition’s voice. The DPP will have to think of something else if it wants the world to hear its message.
Taiwan should reject two flawed answers to the Eswatini controversy: that diplomatic allies no longer matter, or that they must be preserved at any cost. The sustainable answer is to maintain formal diplomatic relations while redesigning development relationships around transparency, local ownership and democratic accountability. President William Lai’s (賴清德) canceled trip to Eswatini has elicited two predictable reactions in Taiwan. One camp has argued that the episode proves Taiwan must double down on support for every remaining diplomatic ally, because Beijing is tightening the screws, and formal recognition is too scarce to risk. The other says the opposite: If maintaining
India’s semiconductor strategy is undergoing a quiet, but significant, recalibration. With the rollout of India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 2.0, New Delhi is signaling a shift away from ambition-driven leaps toward a more grounded, capability-led approach rooted in industrial realities and institutional learning. Rather than attempting to enter the most advanced nodes immediately, India has chosen to prioritize mature technologies in the 28-nanometer to 65-nanometer range. That would not be a retreat, but a strategic alignment with domestic capabilities, market demand and global supply chain gaps. The shift carries the imprimatur of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, indicating that the recalibration is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), during an interview for the podcast Lanshuan Time (蘭萱時間) released on Monday, said that a US professor had said that she deserved to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize following her meeting earlier this month with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Cheng’s “journey of peace” has garnered attention from overseas and from within Taiwan. The latest My Formosa poll, conducted last week after the Cheng-Xi meeting, shows that Cheng’s approval rating is 31.5 percent, up 7.6 percentage points compared with the month before. The same poll showed that 44.5 percent of respondents
China last week announced that it picked two Pakistani astronauts for its Tiangong space station mission, indicating the maturation of the two nations’ relationship from terrestrial infrastructure cooperation to extraterrestrial strategic domains. For Taiwan and India, the developments present an opportunity for democratic collaboration in space, particularly regarding dual-use technologies and the normative frameworks for outer space governance. Sino-Pakistani space cooperation dates back to the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, with a cooperative agreement between the Pakistani Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission, and the Chinese Ministry of Aerospace Industry. Space cooperation was integrated into the China-Pakistan
RSS