On Saturday’s protest
The civil groups’ grand parade on Saturday unabashedly revealed the banality of greediness in the name of being good public servants.
For one thing, appeals such as rejecting defilement and demanding respect are fairly vague and empty gestures; for another, it totally misses out on the value of intergenerational justice and the institutional problems of the current pension system.
Dignity played an insignificant role in the parade. During the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) early reign of Taiwan, public jobs were granted high rewards because they were unwanted. However, with the economic recession, being a public servant now means to remain protected and possibly lead a better life in retirement.
In this sense, public servants nowadays have a higher reputation than before, which is easy to see from the high enrollment rate for the national examinations.
The struggle among public employees and other jobs has long existed in Taiwan. Yet what keeps the civic groups silent is the government manages to maintain their huge benefits package. Not until recently have these groups been stung by the call for reform.
Dignity merely serves as an excuse to cover indignation about individual interests.
When the society arrives at the point where there is a huge deficit in the pension system, what we see from Saturday’s rally is that public employee groups refuse to admit that they have made themselves a target for revolution.
They pride themselves for being “public” servants, but they are not willing to undertake the responsibility of improving social justice. They do not even consider that maintaining their preferences would mean depriving the interests of the younger generation.
It is one thing to fight for one’s own rights, but it is another thing to claim one’s rights legitimately. If one’s rights are based on overriding others, the inequality and the divide will only continue to deepen.
As a young teacher, I strongly advocate for the reform of the pension system. How can we teach our next generation the virtue of integrity without setting ourselves as an example?
Annie Chuang
Taipei
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reach the point of confidence that they can start and win a war to destroy the democratic culture on Taiwan, any future decision to do so may likely be directly affected by the CCP’s ability to promote wars on the Korean Peninsula, in Europe, or, as most recently, on the Indian subcontinent. It stands to reason that the Trump Administration’s success early on May 10 to convince India and Pakistan to deescalate their four-day conventional military conflict, assessed to be close to a nuclear weapons exchange, also served to
The recent aerial clash between Pakistan and India offers a glimpse of how China is narrowing the gap in military airpower with the US. It is a warning not just for Washington, but for Taipei, too. Claims from both sides remain contested, but a broader picture is emerging among experts who track China’s air force and fighter jet development: Beijing’s defense systems are growing increasingly credible. Pakistan said its deployment of Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighters downed multiple Indian aircraft, although New Delhi denies this. There are caveats: Even if Islamabad’s claims are accurate, Beijing’s equipment does not offer a direct comparison
After India’s punitive precision strikes targeting what New Delhi called nine terrorist sites inside Pakistan, reactions poured in from governments around the world. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) issued a statement on May 10, opposing terrorism and expressing concern about the growing tensions between India and Pakistan. The statement noticeably expressed support for the Indian government’s right to maintain its national security and act against terrorists. The ministry said that it “works closely with democratic partners worldwide in staunch opposition to international terrorism” and expressed “firm support for all legitimate and necessary actions taken by the government of India
Taiwan aims to elevate its strategic position in supply chains by becoming an artificial intelligence (AI) hub for Nvidia Corp, providing everything from advanced chips and components to servers, in an attempt to edge out its closest rival in the region, South Korea. Taiwan’s importance in the AI ecosystem was clearly reflected in three major announcements Nvidia made during this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei. First, the US company’s number of partners in Taiwan would surge to 122 this year, from 34 last year, according to a slide shown during CEO Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) keynote speech on Monday last week.