Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) recently traveled to Japan on campaign business for next month’s special municipality elections.
While there he said: “When Japan pursued a more open policy in the Meiji Restoration, having emerged from years of being diplomatically closed off from the rest of the world, it ushered in a Golden Age. With the upcoming special municipality elections [in Taiwan], the Taiwanese are given the clear choice between the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP], between being more open or closing ourselves off.”
This must have struck anyone familiar with modern Japanese history as somewhat odd.
How could King actually use the Meiji Restoration to compare the two sides? It is true that the Meiji Restoration played a significant part in Japan’s transformation.
However, the government at the time wanted to move away from Asian influence — by which they meant China and Chinese culture, dominant at the time — and embrace “the European Powers,” meaning the West, including the US.
In other words, prior to that point in time, Japan had been locked into an Asian cultural world dominated by China, and had fallen behind as a result.
But during the Meiji Restoration, Japanese officials wanted to become more involved in the wider world, giving the country a chance to catch up with the great powers of the time.
Look at the path currently adopted by the various green-camp parties in Taiwan. If you are going to use the Meiji metaphor, you could say that it is they who are more interested in extracting the country from Asian influence and becoming more involved with the West, rejecting the influence — political, economic and cultural — of China and those countries that follow.
The KMT, on the other hand is trying to bring Taiwan closer to China, which is precisely what its China-leaning policies and agreements such such as the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) will do, politically and economically. Its goal is eventual unification with China.
Japan’s success is a vindication of the policies now being championed by the DPP and other green parties. It is the same bold road that Japan struck out on during the Meiji Restoration.
It is entirely different from the KMT’s policy of regression. The ECFA is to be followed by closer cultural assimilation with China. There is little doubt that this is the KMT’s intention. It is quite clearly, explicitly and intentionally heading in the diametrically opposite direction taken by Japan during the Meiji Restoration.
The choice between the KMT and DPP, then, is the choice between dependence on China and involvement with the rest of the world.
When the KMT says “China is the window to the rest of the world,” it sounds like the party has a point, that the proposition is at least arguable.
However, when we stop and think for a second, what becomes apparent is that no other nation is relying on China to engage with the rest of the world.
The argument simply does not hold water. They are using the slogan to secure their objective of making Taiwan a part of China. I ask you, Taiwan ... is this what you want?
King’s poorly conceived metaphor, delivered in Japan, actually highlights the regressive nature of the KMT’s policy. It also demonstrates his superficial grasp of Japanese history.
Huang Tien-lin is a former national policy adviser to the president.
Translated by Paul Cooper
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS