On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the global media, including the media in Taiwan, were focused on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s televised address, looking for how he would reflect on Japan’s role in World War II, and the scope and depth of the apology he expressed.
However, from a Taiwanese perspective, there is another way to approach what Abe said in his speech. When he was talking about those he was to include in his reflections, he listed the peoples of Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, and of neighboring countries such as Taiwan, South Korea and China.
Could it be that Abe was shining a light on Taiwan’s place within the international community? In fact, when he spoke to the US Congress in April, he mentioned how the US had helped with economic development in Asia, saying how after the 1980s, Taiwan, South Korea, ASEAN, and eventually China, all rose.
It is very unusual for the leader of a foreign country, especially in such a public forum, to speak of Taiwan in this way, within the context of international relations. What about Taiwanese? Even though the majority of the public think about the existence of Taiwan, many still tend to confuse it with the Republic of China (ROC).
Even people within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) shy away from mentioning the ROC in dealings with China, fearful that by doing so they will anger Beijing. Like many Taiwanese, they would be quite happy to see the back of the ROC, albeit for different reasons.
In a recent article in the Taipei Times (“Nation’s 70-year search for closure, a just peace,” Aug. 19, page 8.), Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), an executive committee member of the Taiwan Thinktank, wrote about how Taiwan had been dragged into the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the KMT.
In addition to Lai’s arguments, it should be noted that the construct of the ROC on Taiwan, within the context of this civil war, was allowed to incubate within the wider context of the global Cold War, and within this Taiwan became tied by the ROC to the “one China” issue, thus preventing Taiwan from being able to establish itself as a purely autonomous sovereign nation as the ASEAN countries had done.
Taiwan has to divest itself of the ROC if it is to prevent itself from being annexed by China, and to count itself among the nations that, like the ASEAN countries, were reborn in the post-war period as new, independent countries.
If Taiwan is to go down this route, the safest and easiest way would be to apply for UN status as a new country under the name Taiwan.
Koh Se-kai is a former Taiwanese representative to Japan.
Translated by Paul Cooper
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS