Dangerous traffic in Taipei
Thank you for your excellent newspaper, which gives very detailed information about Taiwan. The Taipei Times is indeed a great tool for everyone who wishes to understand society and the political scene in the country.
Thank you for also letting diverse opinions be expressed in your letters section. Contradictory debates are a must in a democratic society.
I want to reply to Shane Johnson (Letters, Aug. 19, page 8) and say how much I agree with his letter. Yes, Taiwanese have a strong sense of civility and it is amazing how safe we feel in the streets or on public transportation at all times (I invite anyone to ride the metro late at night in my hometown, Paris, where on certain lines and destinations, you have to count on luck to remain safe!).
Yet, when Taiwanese get in their cars or ride their scooters, a metamorphosis operates on their personality. All of a sudden, they seem to become blatantly unaware of the presence of pedestrians or fellow neighborhood residents. Of course, not all drivers act with such ruthless and dangerous behavior, but the bad examples sadly outnumber the good ones.
I love Taiwan, and Taipei particularly, after having spent about two years here during my university studies, and ever since I graduated I have kept coming back to vacation. It gives me the opportunity to notice the great changes and improvements the city has made in terms of infrastructure, cultural events, facilities and information for visitors.
Taipei, with its modernity, while preserving its traditions and heritage, has become a unique capital of a developed country, yet it saddens me when I see that its undisciplined traffic and congestion still give it aspects of a Third World country.
I dream of someday seeing a mayor working with the government to eradicate this plague that is a serious issue for people’s health and the environment. It is probably more dangerous to walk on the streets during peak hours than smoking a cigarette!
The time has come to change old habits if Taiwan wants to show its sincere concern about the well-being of its citizens.
ALEXIS SANDERS
Paris, France
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
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS