Representing the other side
On Saturday last week, the Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce of North America (TCCNA) held an event to mark its board meeting in New Jersey.
There were about 1,000 attendees, including Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) Minister Wu Hsin-hsing (吳新興), Taiwanese Representative to the US Stanley Kao (高碩泰), Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) and Stephen Yates, former US deputy national security adviser to former US vice president Dick Cheney.
At the opening ceremony, Wu recognized the chamber’s outstanding contribution to the promotion of Taiwan’s trade and economy.
The TCCNA consists of 39 local chapters throughout the US and Canada and represents more than 10,000 members in a wide range of industries. There is also the World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce, with six chapters covering different continents. The OCAC has close relations with the chambers.
Unfortunately, the Taiwanese chambers of commerce are not the OCAC’s only concern: It also cares for those who identify as overseas Chinese from China — an estimated 40 million — and those from Taiwan who call themselves Chinese, such as the members of the Taiwan Benevolent Association of America (TBAA, 全美台灣同鄉聯誼會).
The OCAC has always given positions such as commissioner or adviser to TBAA members, mostly Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members who strongly support the “one China” principle and favor unification with China, which they see as their “motherland.”
Last month, TBAA president Wang Wei (王維) led a delegation including former OCAC minister Wu Ying-yih (吳英毅) and another 10 commissioners to attend an official reception in China advocating the unification of Taiwan with China.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) and Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) accused them of betraying Taiwan and pledging allegiance to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Wu said he visited China as a tourist and Wang said he promoted friendship between the ROC and the PRC, but as the PRC always insists on the “one China” principle and rejects the ROC, one can only wonder if they were being truthful.
The OCAC is a questionable organization, as it takes care of more Chinese than Taiwanese. It confuses the world as to whom it represents, China or Taiwan. It is preposterous that the government uses Taiwanese taxpayer’s money to care for overseas Chinese and Taiwanese who favor the “one China” principle.
Lai was the keynote speaker at the event. His speech was titled “See Taiwan and believe in the future.”
Taiwan must rely on soft power and a flexible response, always consider Taiwan’s best interests to promote democracy, protect freedom and human rights and that there is a way to resolve cross-strait relations, Lai said.
He explained his “affinity toward China and love for Taiwan” (親中愛台) and said former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) “state to state” dictum and former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) “one country on each side” of the Taiwan Strait focused on Taiwan and clearly cut relations with China.
Taiwan and China are culturally similar and geographically close to each other and a progressive Taiwan will drive a prosperous China, he said, adding that a stable China can provide a safe Taiwan, and that “affinity toward China and love for Taiwan” is not only about Taiwan’s core values, but also about improving relations with China.
This is too naive. What kind of relationship does he expect from the “one China” principle? Did he not see China establishing diplomatic relations with Panama, pushing Taiwan out of the international network?
Lai as an individual has the right to express his personal beliefs about Taiwan-China relations, but not as a mayor of Tainan in a TCCNA keynote speech.
Yates was more reasonable in his comments.
If China keeps backing Taiwan into a corner in the world, then it is time for Taiwan to declare independence, Yates said.
The illusory nation of the ROC has trapped Taiwan in isolation as the world’s sole political orphan. It is time that the Taiwanese government identified what expatriates — Chinese or Taiwanese — the OCAC represents and that it incorporated the organization into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
John Hsieh
Hayward, California
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this