A Taiwanese abroad
The recent articles about the life of Taiwan specialist J. Bruce Jacobs, who passed away recently in Australia at the age of 75, one written by Diane Baker and the other by Han Cheung, were informative and useful (“Taiwan specialist Bruce Jacobs dies in Melbourne,” Nov. 25, page 1, and “Taiwan in Time: Remembering the ‘Big Beard,’” Dec. 1 , page 8).
A Taiwanese man living for many years now in the US read the two articles, and reacted by sending me an e-mail detailing his personal recollections of the times Jacobs had lived through in Taiwan.
“I was a graduate student in America during the 1980 Kaohsiung Incident in Taiwan,” he wrote. “[Chinese Nationalist Party] KMT spies were on every American college campus then. They would report ‘unpatriotic’ students back to Taiwan. Many Taiwanese students were scared. Some students were so afraid that they would use chopsticks to pick up student newsletters [from Taiwanese associations on local campuses] and drop them into a trash can — afraid that reading the newsletter would leave fingerprints.”
“Information regarding the murder of Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) family members was very fuzzy at the time. KMT news outlets indicated that there was a ‘big beard’ guy involved, but no name was given. But we all knew this fake news was KMT’s revenge against Lin’s involvement in democratization events,” he wrote.
“As Taiwan’s democratization has evolved through many stages, the younger generation today likely does not know how difficult the process has been,” he added.
“At one time, a Taiwanese student in Los Angeles used his telephone as a news broadcasting center. He would record some news in his telephone recorder. Anyone who wanted to get the anti-KMT news would dial the number and listen to the news. To break KMT’s news control, some overseas Taiwanese thought about hiring a boat patrolling around Taiwan to broadcast ‘democratic’ news into Taiwan. Many people, including foreigners, such as Bruce Jacobs, took risks in helping Taiwanese,” he wrote.
“Before 2000, no one in my generation could ever have envisioned that Taiwan would become a democracy and freely elect its first non-KMT president, Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Thinking about these past events in Taiwan was like a bittersweet dream come true, with many people to thank for it,” he said.
“For those who have left a footprint — either by their actions, or published or spoken remarks — in this process, like professor Bruce Jacobs, they are a part of Taiwan’s success story,” he said. “We all hope that Taiwan will continue to develop her own unique culture and sense of identity, and become a contributing member of the UN.”
Name Withheld
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
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs