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
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers