No sooner had Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama left Taiwan than senior Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials were breathing a sigh of relief, as if an undesirable guest had forced himself upon an otherwise placid household.
That reaction would have been understandable if, say, it had been hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden passing through Taiwan, but the Dalai Lama, a proponent of peaceful resistance and icon for universal values of freedom and liberty?
This is not to say that other countries that have welcomed the Tibetan leader have not also felt a certain sense of relief after the charismatic monk had left, especially when Beijing launched rhetorical volleys and threatened retaliation. This notwithstanding, the reaction of those countries was to play down Beijing’s threats while embracing the Dalai Lama’s visit and portraying it as a positive thing.
What the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration did, however, went one step beyond minimizing the crisis: It showed disrespect to a man of peace, while portraying the visit as a political gambit by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), as if only pro-independence “troublemakers” were capable of looking up to the Dalai Lama or agreeing with what he stands for. That some media would refer to the visit as an “invitation of the leading opposition [DPP], which favors Taiwan independence from the mainland” only exacerbated this perception.
Ma, members of his doomed Cabinet and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) went out of their way to avoid the Dalai Lama, not because they fundamentally disagree with what he stands for, but rather because their pro-China policies have put them in a straightjacket. Wang’s avoidance was more adroit, in that he left it to “fate” to decide whether his and the Dalai Lama’s paths would cross while the spiritual leader was in Taiwan, but in the end, the chairman of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy stayed away from a prominent global voice for democracy.
The Dalai Lama was allowed to come to Taiwan because the Ma administration was under siege over its poor handling of Typhoon Morakot. He came, Ma and the KMT crossed their fingers, sent an emissary to Beijing to repair the damage, and the moment the monk departed they acted as if nothing had happened. By yesterday, Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) — the man in charge of cross-strait talks — was saying that “ties [between Taiwan and China] will be able to return to the right track in a slow manner.”
In other words, the visit by a peaceful activist was “disruptive” and something negative. At the very least, it was an unexpected bump in the road for what, in their eyes at least, are far more important matters.
There was a time when Beijing’s intimidation applied to Taiwan abroad if Taipei sought to expand diplomatically, gain entry to international organizations, or when former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) sought to visit countries that were not diplomatic allies. By adopting an obsequious approach to cross-strait relations from the beginning, the Ma administration has allowed Beijing to bully Taiwanese on their own soil, forcing the president and top government officials to avoid the Dalai Lama as if he were persona non grata.
Not only did this humiliate a great man of peace, but it also widened the divide between the KMT, the government and the public, while falsely projecting the image abroad that only DPP supporters and “splittists” delighted in having the exiled spiritual leader grace our shores.
The government and local industries breathed a sigh of relief after Shin Kong Life Insurance Co last week said it would relinquish surface rights for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) to Nvidia Corp. The US chip-design giant’s plan to expand its local presence will be crucial for Taiwan to safeguard its core role in the global artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and to advance the nation’s AI development. The land in dispute is owned by the Taipei City Government, which in 2021 sold the rights to develop and use the two plots of land, codenamed T17 and T18, to the
US President Donald Trump has announced his eagerness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un while in South Korea for the APEC summit. That implies a possible revival of US-North Korea talks, frozen since 2019. While some would dismiss such a move as appeasement, renewed US engagement with North Korea could benefit Taiwan’s security interests. The long-standing stalemate between Washington and Pyongyang has allowed Beijing to entrench its dominance in the region, creating a myth that only China can “manage” Kim’s rogue nation. That dynamic has allowed Beijing to present itself as an indispensable power broker: extracting concessions from Washington, Seoul
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Taiwan’s labor force participation rate among people aged 65 or older was only 9.9 percent for 2023 — far lower than in other advanced countries, Ministry of Labor data showed. The rate is 38.3 percent in South Korea, 25.7 percent in Japan and 31.5 percent in Singapore. On the surface, it might look good that more older adults in Taiwan can retire, but in reality, it reflects policies that make it difficult for elderly people to participate in the labor market. Most workplaces lack age-friendly environments, and few offer retraining programs or flexible job arrangements for employees older than 55. As
RSS