I am not Taiwanese. I am an American resident in Taiwan. Politics do not interest me — neither Taiwan’s nor the US’. However, how can I not feel the different mood in this nation since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)? Taiwanese were given a choice between the past and the future. They chose the future. Every moment of every day I see that was the right decision.
How different this same choice is playing out in the US right now.
Americans just rejected US Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders, who, like Tsai, came forward with a voice and a vision that is true, and that could have led the US forward to a new and sustainable prosperity. Unlike Taiwan, the US voted against its tomorrow and instead chose its yesterday.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has for some time trumpeted that the US’ era has come to an end and China’s has begun.
From Taiwan, it does not look like that. It is Taiwan, not China, that is eclipsing the US. Consider this: All the policies put forward by Sanders and rejected by US voters as too impractical and too pricey are already firmly in place in Taiwan and have been successful for some time.
Day in and day out I see the effect and it is good all around.
None of this will happen in the US any time soon, thanks to presumptive Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and her establishment cohorts. Expect instead the same old military adventurism to go on as before. All this machismo in the name of “America’s first female president.”
Well, Taiwan already has a female president and instead of getting elected because she was a woman she got elected because she was the best candidate for the job.
She promises to carry Taiwan forward beyond what the US turned its back on, which Taiwan already has, to a future that might have to be invented here and in other similarly smaller and enlightened nations.
This future promises to breach the socialism/capitalism divide that so terrifies US voters, draw out the best features of each system, and open the way for democratic innovations that can only now be envisioned, perhaps in this very island nation.
The unfortunate PRC stands to be foiled again. The way Beijing envisions it, it is a matter of their big ferocious dinosaur empire replacing the US’ waning Tyrannosaur power.
However, I see evidence all around me in remarkable little Taiwan, and I saw it as well as in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, where I have traveled in recent years, that small forward-thinking nations are a new and superior breed that has come into being.
It is clear that just as diminutive mammals prevailed in the end over the monster reptiles of the past, so enlightened little nations like Taiwan will take the torch of world leadership from a fatigued and frightened backward-looking US, as a disappointed wannabe China looks on.
William Stimson is an American who lives and writes in central Taiwan.
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
Eighty-seven percent of Taiwan’s energy supply this year came from burning fossil fuels, with more than 47 percent of that from gas-fired power generation. The figures attracted international attention since they were in October published in a Reuters report, which highlighted the fragility and structural challenges of Taiwan’s energy sector, accumulated through long-standing policy choices. The nation’s overreliance on natural gas is proving unstable and inadequate. The rising use of natural gas does not project an image of a Taiwan committed to a green energy transition; rather, it seems that Taiwan is attempting to patch up structural gaps in lieu of
The Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office on Monday announced that they would not countersign or promulgate the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) passed by the Legislative Yuan — a first in the nation’s history and the ultimate measure the central government could take to counter what it called an unconstitutional legislation. Since taking office last year, the legislature — dominated by the opposition alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party — has passed or proposed a slew of legislation that has stirred controversy and debate, such as extending
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators have twice blocked President William Lai’s (賴清德) special defense budget bill in the Procedure Committee, preventing it from entering discussion or review. Meanwhile, KMT Legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) proposed amendments that would enable lawmakers to use budgets for their assistants at their own discretion — with no requirement for receipts, staff registers, upper or lower headcount limits, or usage restrictions — prompting protest from legislative assistants. After the new legislature convened in February, the KMT joined forces with the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and, leveraging their slim majority, introduced bills that undermine the Constitution, disrupt constitutional
RSS