The truth behind the KMT
I would like to respond to an article written by Jerome Keating (“KMT diaspora grieves for fatherland,” May 11, page 8).
It might help the [Chinese Nationalist Party] KMT to buy Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ excellent book entitled Death and Dying. It is painfully obvious that the KMT has still not gotten used to the fact that “China is not theirs.” They lost the Chinese Civil War and got run out of the mainland. No amount of hand-wringing, finger-pointing or rewriting of history is going to change those facts. Suffice to say: “Get over it, and move on.”
What is sadly evident is the “talking out of both sides of their faces” that has been going on for the past seven years … at least. Shadowy emissaries from both the KMT and President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration make trips to China to discuss who knows what. Taiwanese are told one thing, only to find out that something else has taken place.
Even lame duck President Ma has been relegated to the sidelines of international activity by his own party, and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) refused to speak to him at an APEC Summit. Who did Xi choose to speak to in Shanghai? KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), who, it seems, cannot get his story straight on what was said or how it was said. However, he can try to silence an international news reporter for misinterpretation. I suspect those who greeted Chu at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport got it right — shoes and water bottles.
The KMT needs to “get over it” and move on. Stop speaking “with a forked tongue” and just tell the Taiwanese electorate the truth for a change. What is that truth? I guess that it is simply this: “We, the KMT, desperately want to return to China at all costs to get our share of the money pot that is China. We do not care what Taiwanese want. We know what is best.” A sad statement, but apparently it is the truth.
Tom Kuleck
Greater Taichung
Who supports the CCP?
Given the appalling human rights record of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime, I am surprised that anyone in Taiwan would want anything to do with them.
Human rights monitors have reported increased harassment of dissidents, intellectuals, Christians and Falun Gong practitioners, and increased censorship of the Internet. Chinese know only what the CCP wants them to know.
It is my belief that the world will support a free, democratic, independent Taiwan.
Gavan Duffy
Brisbane
Earthquakes, police killings
In a recent letter (Letters, May 13, page 8), Wang Ching-ning wrote: “Juxtaposing the news of Nepal’s earthquake with the news of Baltimore’s protest, sharp-eyed observers would find that Nepalese did not loot during the mess, while Americans did.” The people of Baltimore, Maryland, were protesting the injustice of the killing of an unarmed, handcuffed civilian at the hands of the police.
Yes, people should not loot. Yes, police officers should not kill unarmed, handcuffed civilians. It is worse for police officers to kill unarmed, handcuffed civilians than for people to loot. Human life is more important than stolen items. People in Nepal were killed in an earthquake.
They were not killed by police officers while unarmed and handcuffed. Comparing Nepal and Baltimore shows that they are two completely different things.
Andres Chang
Taipei
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past