You know election time is around the corner when you start hearing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government officials trumpeting “Taiwan” and “Taiwanese people” in their speeches.
At a seminar in Taipei last week on cross-strait relations from 2008 to this year, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said in a speech that “putting Taiwan first for the benefit of the people” was the main principle guiding the KMT government’s policy toward China.
“It also needs to be ensured that [Taiwanese] people have the right to decide the future development of cross-strait relations,” she said.
With Double Ten National Day this weekend, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will also likely accentuate the importance of “Taiwan’s interests” and “Taiwanese people” in his national day address.
Naturally, government officials will highlight the great importance they attach to the nation’s interests and its people. However, amid the backdrop of the KMT government signing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China, it is not hard to see the irony and farce of pro-Taiwan words pouring out of KMT officials’ mouths.
How can the Ma government convince the voters that it truly believes that the “people have the right to decide the future development of cross-strait relations” when the public is muzzled and the government rejects any chance for critics to have their voices heard through a referendum?
On Thursday last week, the Executive Yuan’s Committee of Appeal upheld the Referendum Review Committee’s rejection of a petition, signed by 200,000 people, to put the ECFA to a referendum, again supressing the public’s voice. So much for KMT remarks that the public has the right to decide the future of cross-strait development.
The KMT government should heed the warning suggested by a recent Research, Development and Evaluation Commission poll. The survey showed that in 2007, 63 percent of people referred to themselves as Taiwanese, while 15.4 percent considered themselves Chinese. In 2008, after Ma won the presidency, the group that considered themselves Taiwanese rose to 67.1 percent, while those who regarded themselves as Chinese dropped to 13.6 percent. In a similar poll in May last year, the number who saw themselves as Taiwanese slid to 64.6 percent, although those who saw themselves as Chinese dipped even further, to 11.5 percent.
Statistics from National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center show that in 2007, 43 percent of respondents saw themselves as Taiwanese, while 5.4 percent considered themselves Chinese. In June this year, the percentage of people who identified themselves as Taiwanese rose to 52 percent, while those claiming to be Chinese dropped to 3.8 percent. Meanwhile, the group that saw themselves as Taiwanese as well as Chinese also declined, dropping from 44.7 percent in 2007 to 40.4 percent in June this year.
These numbers suggest that the public’s identification with Taiwan has not diminished despite the Ma administration’s China-friendly policies.
The Ma government can keep using the words “Taiwan” and “Taiwanese people” all it wants, but in case the KMT hasn’t realized, using these phrases to get votes and then tossing them away like toilet paper when their use has been fulfilled will only hurt the Ma government, undermining its credibility and repulsing the public with its hypocrisy.
The US Senate’s passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which urges Taiwan’s inclusion in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise and allocates US$1 billion in military aid, marks yet another milestone in Washington’s growing support for Taipei. On paper, it reflects the steadiness of US commitment, but beneath this show of solidarity lies contradiction. While the US Congress builds a stable, bipartisan architecture of deterrence, US President Donald Trump repeatedly undercuts it through erratic decisions and transactional diplomacy. This dissonance not only weakens the US’ credibility abroad — it also fractures public trust within Taiwan. For decades,
In 1976, the Gang of Four was ousted. The Gang of Four was a leftist political group comprising Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members: Jiang Qing (江青), its leading figure and Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) last wife; Zhang Chunqiao (張春橋); Yao Wenyuan (姚文元); and Wang Hongwen (王洪文). The four wielded supreme power during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but when Mao died, they were overthrown and charged with crimes against China in what was in essence a political coup of the right against the left. The same type of thing might be happening again as the CCP has expelled nine top generals. Rather than a
Taiwan Retrocession Day is observed on Oct. 25 every year. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government removed it from the list of annual holidays immediately following the first successful transition of power in 2000, but the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-led opposition reinstated it this year. For ideological reasons, it has been something of a political football in the democratic era. This year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) designated yesterday as “Commemoration Day of Taiwan’s Restoration,” turning the event into a conceptual staging post for its “restoration” to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Mainland Affairs Council on Friday criticized
A Reuters report published this week highlighted the struggles of migrant mothers in Taiwan through the story of Marian Duhapa, a Filipina forced to leave her infant behind to work in Taiwan and support her family. After becoming pregnant in Taiwan last year, Duhapa lost her job and lived in a shelter before giving birth and taking her daughter back to the Philippines. She then returned to Taiwan for a second time on her own to find work. Duhapa’s sacrifice is one of countless examples among the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who sustain many of Taiwan’s households and factories,
RSS