President or puppet
How do you tell the difference between a president of a young democracy enacting progressive change and a political puppet of the powers that be? To answer this question, look no further than Taiwan’s “President” Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as he stops over in Seattle on his way home from a visit to Central America.
There was no visit to Washington, DC, as high-level visits between the US and Taiwan don’t exist, a consequence of which is the very isolation that Ma has sought to address by inching Taiwan closer and closer into the arms of the “one China” policy.
Why is President Ma still “Mr Ma” despite a 58 percent mandate to elect him? Because he chooses it. In November last year, a high-level visit took place between China and Taiwan where negotiator Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) addressed President Ma as “Mr Ma.” When the choice of words is so very important to the international recognition of Taiwan, failure to correct language that is in line with the hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party is unacceptable. After all, how much of the global community is confused by the “Chinese Taipei” designation that Taiwan must use in venues such as the Olympics? What’s in a name, indeed.
The public support that put President Ma in office was based largely on economic promises, the most famous of which was his “6-3-3 Plan,” a plan for 6 percent economic growth, per capita GDP of US$30,000 and less than 3 percent unemployment. Ma has all but given up on addressing the economic issues that won him favor with the electorate, opting instead to disguise conciliatory policies with China as economic measures.
Despite some increased economic opportunities for Taiwan in the region, such as direct charter flights between China and Taiwan and the deregulation of Taiwanese investment in China [sic], President Ma’s focus on such policies is wagging the dog to divert attention from a degradation of civil liberties back home. During Chen’s visit, police were authorized to use excessive force on protesters. Afterwards, members of the opposition pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party were persecuted, some indicted and some held with no cause, including former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Although most of the media was already under the control of Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the scarcity of criticism of the Ma regime is a testament to the erosion of freedom of speech in Taiwan.
So here’s hoping that during Ma’s stopover in the US — the place of his education, the home of the greatest democracy in the world — he recognizes that he is indeed president of his own fledgling democracy and not a puppet for communist China.
GEORGE YEH
Seattle, Washington
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