Taiwan is a free and a democratic nation working to consolidate its democracy and preserve its status as a rights-respecting nation. China, on the other hand, is a one-party state led by a despotic dictatorship.
Given the obvious differences between Taiwan’s democratic system of government and the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime, which lead to different understandings about what a public servant is, many Taiwanese have been baffled to learn that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government officials have been conducting so-called business trips across the Taiwan Strait in hopes of picking up lessons from the Chinese government.
It was reported that a delegation of officials from the Examination Yuan’s Civil Service Protection and Training Commission, alongside human resources department heads from agencies such as the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Regional Civil Service’s Development Institute, on Nov. 13 went on a six-day trip to China for seminars on “leadership development and training strategies for public servants.”
In its post-trip report, beyond describing the seminars as an important reference as the agency crafts its future training policies, the delegation lauded the administrative schools it visited as having “a commendable attitude in seeking truth from facts and a spirit for a rule of law,” adding that it can learn media outlet communication strategies and crisis management from the Chinese seminars.
The report’s absurdity is beyond flabbergasting.
The commission’s Web site says its duties include making recommendations about the protection of rights related to civil servants’ status, rank and other regulations. It also takes care of such areas as promotions, counseling and coordination in protection affairs. Additionally, it handles high-ranking civil service training and the development of training evaluation techniques, among other things.
What exactly does a government agency responsible for instilling the importance of civil service training hope that Taiwan’s civil servants could learn from China, which has no real free elections, no freedom of the press and no respect for human rights?
Commission vice chairman Samson Lee (李嵩賢) said that attending seminars of this type in China does not address political issues, adding that people should not avoid trying to understand China just because it is an authoritarian regime.
Lee’s remarks are anything but convincing. No one is against facilitating exchanges to gain insights into China’s systems, but it is quite a different thing when such trips are conducted with a notion to learn lessons from China.
China has no real bureaucracy, as all its so-called civil servants are monitored by the CCP and serve at the party’s call, only for the party.
Taiwan, on the other hand, is a democratic nation whose public servants are expected to adhere to the principle of administrative neutrality.
The commission’s case is not isolated. According to budget data compiled by Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Yeh Chin-ling (葉津鈴), a total of NT$117.7 million (US$3.72 million) has been appropriated by Cabinet-level agencies for travel to China.
Trips to China take up more than half of all overseas travel for agencies such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission and the Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Servicemen.
The culture ministry leads, with NT$13.47 million budgeted.
No one is against cross-strait exchanges. However, Taiwanese must keep a vigilant eye on the apparent trend of KMT government officials squandering taxpayers’ money by making unnecessary trips to China — especially with such distorted purposes as “learning from China’s experience.”
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
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs