“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ [危機] is composed of two characters — one represents danger and the other represents opportunity,” former US president John F. Kennedy once said.
After a series of recent government policy announcements that have prompted many to worry about the nation’s future and wonder where President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is leading Taiwanese, concerned citizens might look to the quote and think optimistically that all is not as hopeless as it seems.
Taiwanese have good reason for being anxious about the future and the nation’s well-being. For one, despite the discovery of a new case of mad cow disease in California late last month, the Ma administration shows no sign of softening its stance on its plan to conditionally relax the ban on imported US beef containing residues of the leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine, something that could potentially pose a health risk to consumers.
Then there was the government’s decision to allow fuel and electricity price increases, which further rubbed salt into the wounds of the many who have suffered the sting of stagnant salaries and a rising cost of living in recent years. The inevitable rise in retail prices has led many people to worry how the rising cost of living might further contribute to the list of family tragedies that have been served up at the newsstands in recent months.
Anyone who put their faith in Ma’s government, thinking it would eventually come up with something beneficial to the public, has had their hopes dashed — Ma, in an interview late last month, said he does not have to curry favor with voters now he has been re-elected.
It sends a chill down the spine to think the president could be so arrogant as to say such a thing in public.
As if this were not bad enough, data from the National Debt Clock, released on Monday, showed the country’s national debt has increased to about NT$5.23 trillion (US$178 billion) as of the end of last month — the sixth monthly increase in a row.
Fortunately, although Ma may no longer need to cozy up to voters, lawmakers still do.
Lawmakers of all parties need to be responsive to their constituencies. They must all heed the concerns, frustrations and grievances of voters in their respective constituencies if they hope to be re-elected in the next round of legislative elections.
This was seen on Monday when the Cabinet’s proposal to relax restrictions on imports of US beef products containing ractopamine residues was voted on by the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Cheng Ru-fen (鄭汝芬), who opposes relaxing the ban, did not show up at the meeting, providing a good example of how Taiwanese, through exerting pressure on lawmakers, could still force the government to serve the public interest.
Ma may choose to remain oblivious to the people’s voice, now that there is no prospect of him having to run in an election again. However, the question all lawmakers who aspire to another term must ask themselves is: Do they want people’s votes in the next legislative election?
If the answer is yes, they are advised to search their conscience — and not simply follow the directions of their party chairman — when they cast their vote in the legislature on issues that matter to the nation and its people’s interests and well-being.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this