Thirty-four US, Canadian, European and Australian academics and writers, including former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairman Nat Bellocchi and Stephen Yates, former deputy national security affairs assistant to former US vice president Dick Cheney, published an open letter addressed to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) last weekend, calling on the government not to use the Control Yuan and the judicial system for political ends. The letter takes aim at the government’s investigation into the alleged disappearance of documents from the presidential office during the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
The letter questioned the fact that the government announced the investigation the day before Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) announced his intention to run for the DPP’s nomination for next year’s presidential election and said it “certainly gives the impression of a political ploy intended to discredit the DPP and its candidates.”
The letter also said: “As observers of political developments in Taiwan for many decades, we believe that these charges are politically motivated.”
Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強), the Presidential Office’s spokesperson, responded to these suspicions by saying: “The Republic of China [ROC] is a country ruled by law” and that “the Presidential Office’s consistent approach when discovering that national documents have been destroyed has been to handle the issue in accordance with the law.”
Hearing the tone of this statement, one would be excused for thinking that we have returned to the authoritarian era. When the government at that time responded to international protests against the persecution of political dissidents, the defense was always to say that the ROC was “a country ruled by law” and that the issue would be “handled in accordance with the law,” adding a “hope that foreigners will respect that.”
This attitude is no different from the attitude of autocratic China. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) do not have even the most basic understanding of how democracy, liberty and human rights are universal values and not a domestic issue that foreigners are poking their nose into.
China’s recent arrest of outspoken artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) has become a cause of concern for many countries. The Chinese government did not confirm the arrest until the international demands for Ai’s release grew stronger. Only then did they announce that Ai had been arrested for “economic crimes.” In the eyes of the Ma administration, that would surely be a matter of acting “in accordance with the law.” China has for many years been arresting Christians participating in private religious meetings and persecuting Falun Gong followers. When the Chinese government claims that it is of course doing so “in accordance with the law,” it is abandoning China’s constitutional guarantees for religious freedom as if it were an old shoe thrown by the wayside.
If we think back to the authoritarian era, wasn’t that exactly what the KMT used to say? All the same problems seem to be recurring in the current government. The KMT and the CCP are responding to the international community in very similar ways.
Ma frequently talks about democracy, liberty and human rights, but whether he really adheres to the view that they represent universal values is a different matter altogether. We want to stress that concern for democracy, liberty and human rights is not restricted by national borders. Past international concern for the authoritarian oppression of Taiwanese was based on these universal values. The 34 signatories of the open letter to Ma are also basing their concerns that the government is using the judiciary as a tool for political persecution on these universal values.
If Ma wants to be remembered as Mr Democracy, he should listen to their concerns and implement reform if any mistakes have occurred. When this group of petitioners hears that the government feels foreigners should stay out of Taiwan’s domestic political situation, they will probably become even more concerned about political motives behind the hunt for the missing documents.
It has taken the government almost three years to handle the case of the missing documents “in accordance with the law” — the administrative efficiency is breathtaking. According to the general procedure for handling official documents at government institutions — the Presidential Office is no exception — such documents must go through acceptance, registration, distribution, handling and filing procedures.
With more than 30,000 documents missing, the Presidential Office should first require that the department handling documents promptly compile a report on the handling process and offer a public explanation. Above all, following this international call for justice, the government can no longer turn a deaf ear.
This international group of 34 academics and writers are not the only people complaining. More than two years ago, the human rights reports of the US Congress, Freedom House, The Economist, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders repeatedly showed how democracy, liberty and human rights in Taiwan were deteriorating under Ma. The experience of these international observers is confirmed by the experience of people here in Taiwan.
This should increase our worries that the increasingly close relationship between the Ma administration and the autocratic Chinese government will become closer still and that the international community once again will begin to see Taiwan as the authoritarian state it used to be.
As the true masters of Taiwan, we must use the coming legislative and presidential elections to tell the world that the Ma administration does not represent mainstream Taiwanese society.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) are expected to meet this month in Paris to prepare for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). According to media reports, the two sides would discuss issues such as the potential purchase of Boeing aircraft by China, increasing imports of US soybeans and the latest impacts of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs. However, recent US military action against Iran has added uncertainty to the Trump-Xi summit. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) called the joint US-Israeli airstrikes and the
RSS