Rising chorus of dissent
In August last year, the Citizen 1985 group sang Do you hear the people sing? from the musical Les Miserables for late army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) and that same song is now being sung by students in Taipei protesting the cross-strait service trade agreement.
Student demonstrators and other activists occupying the Legislative Yuan in Taipei chanted: “Reject the service trade pact, reopen the negotiations, defend our democracy,” while thousands of their supporters surrounded the legislature to add their voices to the protest. All these voices calling out in unison are very touching.
So what is the service trade pact and why are so many Taipei students opposed to it? President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government has said that the agreement will help the nation’s economy and enable Taiwanese to make more money from China. What Ma is keeping under wraps is that the trade deal also opens a door for China to pour workers and capital into Taiwan. With those funds, Chinese enterprises and businesspeople will be able to easily buy out Taiwanese companies and eliminate any competition, while the influx of Chinese workers will take over local mom-and-pop businesses and seize job opportunities.
“In the future, Taiwanese small and medium-sized enterprises will face challenges from competition with [Chinese-invested] companies that have abundant capital and use vertically integrated business models. It will also threaten the survival of office workers, farmers, blue-collar workers and businesspeople,” an academic assessment said.
Since Ma first assumed the presidency in 2008, he has opened up the nation to Chinese people, money, trade, cargo and services. As a result, Taiwanese are meant to be turning larger profits and their standard of living improving considerably. However, in reality, since the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) was implemented, Taiwan’s economy has been getting steadily worse. Only big bosses like Hon Hai Precision Industry Co chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) or HTC Corp chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) have profited from this, not ordinary individuals.
The situation is such that college graduates can look forward to a salary of only NT$22,000, which is about US$700 a month. How can they make a living and raise a family with such a low income? The service pact would make things even worse, as graduates would also have to face a flood of cheap Chinese labor. If this comes about, what kind of future is there for Taiwanese students?
What students need is a fair environment in which they can grow and prosper equally. They need to stand up and fight for their future before it is too late, before Ma misleads Taiwan onto a doomed route like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, before the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) funnels more Chinese into the country to turn it over to China like Crimea to Russia. Taiwanese must stand up and say “no.” The hundreds of student protesters and their supporters are heroes, let us sing along with them and add our voices to theirs.
John Hsieh
Hayward, California
Chinese actor Alan Yu (于朦朧) died after allegedly falling from a building in Beijing on Sept. 11. The actor’s mysterious death was tightly censored on Chinese social media, with discussions and doubts about the incident quickly erased. Even Hong Kong artist Daniel Chan’s (陳曉東) post questioning the truth about the case was automatically deleted, sparking concern among overseas Chinese-speaking communities about the dark culture and severe censorship in China’s entertainment industry. Yu had been under house arrest for days, and forced to drink with the rich and powerful before he died, reports said. He lost his life in this vicious
In South Korea, the medical cosmetic industry is fiercely competitive and prices are low, attracting beauty enthusiasts from Taiwan. However, basic medical risks are often overlooked. While sharing a meal with friends recently, I heard one mention that his daughter would be going to South Korea for a cosmetic skincare procedure. I felt a twinge of unease at the time, but seeing as it was just a casual conversation among friends, I simply reminded him to prioritize safety. I never thought that, not long after, I would actually encounter a patient in my clinic with a similar situation. She had
A recent trio of opinion articles in this newspaper reflects the growing anxiety surrounding Washington’s reported request for Taiwan to shift up to 50 percent of its semiconductor production abroad — a process likely to take 10 years, even under the most serious and coordinated effort. Simon H. Tang (湯先鈍) issued a sharp warning (“US trade threatens silicon shield,” Oct. 4, page 8), calling the move a threat to Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” which he argues deters aggression by making Taiwan indispensable. On the same day, Hsiao Hsi-huei (蕭錫惠) (“Responding to US semiconductor policy shift,” Oct. 4, page 8) focused on
George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This article will help readers avoid repeating mistakes by examining four examples from the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces and the Republic of China (ROC) forces that involved two city sieges and two island invasions. The city sieges compared are Changchun (May to October 1948) and Beiping (November 1948 to January 1949, renamed Beijing after its capture), and attempts to invade Kinmen (October 1949) and Hainan (April 1950). Comparing and contrasting these examples, we can learn how Taiwan may prevent a war with
RSS