Why Aborigines support KMT
Many outsiders coming to Taiwan find Aboriginal support for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hard to understand. Given the suppression of their cultures, languages and even their names during the five decades of one-party rule, one might imagine their disenchantment with the organ of that rule would be as great or greater than that of the Hoklo Taiwanese, and that Aborigines would be staunch supporters, and even leaders, of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Reading the smug post-election “victory” analysis by Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) of the DPP-allied New Society for Taiwan (“Has Ma done anything right yet?,” Dec.13, page 8), helps to explain why Aborigines do not trust the opposition:
“In Taitung County, the DPP closed the gap from 20,000 votes in 2005 to around 5,000 this time. If we subtract the votes of the county’s Aborigines, who are mostly loyal Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) voters, the DPP would have won in Taitung. This result shows how angry people in Taitung are about the performance of outgoing county commissioner Kuang Li-chen (鄺麗貞), who used to enjoy Ma’s strong support.”
Why not go the whole hog and argue that Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) election as president should not stand because of all the women who voted for his “good looks”? But no; thanks to the influence of former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and others, sexism is taboo in the party, at least in explicit terms. Clearly not racism, however.
Ridding itself of such attitudes would help transform the DPP into a truly liberal party and, as a pleasant side effect, increase its chances of electoral success.
MARK CALTONHILL
Wugu, Taipei County
Man-made climate change
Global warming has been a controversial issue for two decades. Some think global warming is caused mainly by carbon dioxide from the combustion of coal, oil and gas, while others think global warming is no more than a normal part of the natural climate cycle.
Some claim that global cooling has taken place in recent years, but that the data indicating this have been covered up by “global warming scientists.” The expression “global warming” has been replaced by “climate change,” presumably because the latter can cover both global warming and cooling. During global cooling, should we emit more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
The US Environmental Protection Agency recently said that carbon dioxide is hazardous to health. If this is true, people should refrain from drinking beer and carbonated soft drinks. Believe it or not, carbon dioxide now joins alcohol and sugar as unhealthy ingredients in beverages.
The US Department of Energy recently announced that it would award US$334 million to American Electric Power in Columbus, Ohio, to finance about half the cost of the first commercial-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage project for a coal-fired power plant in New Haven, West Virginia. Carbon dioxide will be absorbed from a slipstream of flue gas equivalent to 20 megawatts, compressed and injected underground at a depth of 1.5 miles (2.4km) for storage. If the total cost is US$668 million, the interest is 5 percent per year, the plant lasts for 20 years, and operation is 8,760 hours a year, the roughly estimated cost of the carbon dioxide capture and storage would be US$0.38/kWh. Hopefully this cost can be reduced drastically in future plants. The residential electricity cost is typically US$0.10/kWh.
Regardless of whether global warming is real or not, renewable energies should be developed since fossil fuels take millions of years to form and are limited.
CHARLES HONG
Columbus, Ohio
Taiwan’s higher education system is facing an existential crisis. As the demographic drop-off continues to empty classrooms, universities across the island are locked in a desperate battle for survival, international student recruitment and crucial Ministry of Education funding. To win this battle, institutions have turned to what seems like an objective measure of quality: global university rankings. Unfortunately, this chase is a costly illusion, and taxpayers are footing the bill. In the past few years, the goalposts have shifted from pure research output to “sustainability” and “societal impact,” largely driven by commercial metrics such as the UK-based Times Higher Education (THE) Impact
History might remember 2026, not 2022, as the year artificial intelligence (AI) truly changed everything. ChatGPT’s launch was a product moment. What is happening now is an anthropological moment: AI is no longer merely answering questions. It is now taking initiative and learning from others to get things done, behaving less like software and more like a colleague. The economic consequence is the rise of the one-person company — a structure anticipated in the 2024 book The Choices Amid Great Changes, which I coauthored. The real target of AI is not labor. It is hierarchy. When AI sharply reduces the cost
The inter-Korean relationship, long defined by national division, offers the clearest mirror within East Asia for cross-strait relations. Yet even there, reunification language is breaking down. The South Korean government disclosed on Wednesday last week that North Korea’s constitutional revision in March had deleted references to reunification and added a territorial clause defining its border with South Korea. South Korea is also seriously debating whether national reunification with North Korea is still necessary. On April 27, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung marked the eighth anniversary of the Panmunjom Declaration, the 2018 inter-Korean agreement in which the two Koreas pledged to
I wrote this before US President Donald Trump embarked on his uneventful state visit to China on Thursday. So, I shall confine my observations to the joint US-Philippine military exercise of April 20 through May 8, known collectively as “Balikatan 2026.” This year’s Balikatan was notable for its “firsts.” First, it was conducted primarily with Taiwan in mind, not the Philippines or even the South China Sea. It also showed that in the Pacific, America’s alliance network is still robust. Allies are enthusiastic about America’s renewed leadership in the region. Nine decades ago, in 1936, America had neither military strength
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