Next year’s elections
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is not cooperating with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) over the proposed same-sex marriage bill. Why would it when it has 77 percent of Taiwanese behind it on this issue, as last year’s referendums demonstrated.
This percentage converted into votes will see the KMT win next year’s elections in a landslide. However, having been gifted this opportunity by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the DPP, the KMT could still blow it by cozying up too closely with Beijing, a move that would concern most Taiwanese.
The KMT has, in the past, been slow to come to terms with public opinion on Taiwan’s future direction and has paid a price electorally.
Gavan Duffy
Queensland, Australia
Trump, Nobel and the CCP
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has nominated US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Eighteen Republican senators made a similar proposal. The world, especially Japan, finally has experienced respite from the fear of North Korean missiles and nuclear war after Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in June last year.
Taiwan, as a member of the US-led Indo-Pacific Alliance against Chinese communist expansion, must join this important movement to support President Trump and protect her free democracy.
Taiwan has been a victim of Chinese autocracy (the Chinese Nationalist Party, KMT) since immediately after Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II. While Taiwan struggled to establish democracy with painful sacrifices, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) joined the KMT to combat Taiwan’s advance of democracy. The suffering of Taiwan is aggravated by the erroneous judgement of the free nations that economic development would transform China into a democracy similar to Taiwan. The result speaks volumes. The spectacular economic growth of China is now used by the CCP to legitimize its authoritarian rule.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) repeatedly rejects democracy and prefers socialism with Chinese characteristics.
He is now the sole ruler of the CCP. He threatens to occupy Taiwan by force if necessary.
The book Why Nations Fail explains why China is still on the authoritarian path of no return and its economy will fail, similar to the old Soviet Union. Awaiting the natural course of the CCP’s self-destruction will take time and risks the possibility of the communist autocracy overthrowing free-world democracies.
The current precarious state of Taiwan’s democracy due to CCP interference might occur in the US, as the CCP has already infiltrated all walks of life in that country.
The CCP must be considered a malignant, even lethal and hostile country. The only remedy is the peaceful dialogue from a position of strength being conducted by the Trump administration. The CCP and its twin brother, the KMT, have already sacrificed more than 1 billion innocent civilians with impunity.
China has contributed to the degradation of Venezuela into a nation of unimaginable misery. The hope of democracy in the Arab Spring has devolved into chaos due to CCP interference. Syria is still suffering severe destruction and human miseries, and has become a fertile ground for murderous Islamic State terrorists.
The CCP’s support of African despots has resulted in massive migration of desperate poor people to Europe. The One Belt One Road Initiative seems to conceal those old crimes.
Binzu Young,
Scottsdale, Arizona
Zuyu Ann
Tampa, Florida
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