Diplomacy
Taiwan cuts ties with Kuwait
March 26, 1971: The Republic of China (ROC) severs diplomatic relations with the State of Kuwait after it switches recognition to China. The Middle Eastern country currently has no representation of any kind in Taiwan.
Indonesia rectifies name blunder
March 24, 2011: After mistakenly listing Taiwan as “Taiwan, PRC” on its Web site for visa applications, Indonesian foreign ministry swaps the name to “Chinese Taipei” in response to the protest issued by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Politics
Lee becomes Taiwan’s first directly elected president
March 23, 1996: Taiwan’s first direct presidential election takes place. Incumbent president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and his running mate Lien Chan (連戰) win with 54 percent of the vote.
March 24, 2000: Lee, who concurrently serves as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, steps down from the party chairmanship to assume political responsibility for the party’s defeat in the presidential election. The Democratic Progressive Party’s Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) won the election, ending 55 years of rule under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Official fired for inappropriate comments
March 23, 2009: Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), a former government press officer who was fired over articles he wrote under his pen name Fan Lan-chin (范蘭欽), in which he referred to Taiwanese as “rednecks” and himself as a “high-class Mainlander.” Kuo’s rhetoric got him into trouble again the next year, when National Taiwan University professor Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟) and political commentator Chin Heng-wei (金恆煒) sued him for defamation. Kuo had called them “official violent dogs for Taiwanese independence.” Kuo was ordered to pay NT$50,000 in damages.
Society
Political assassination criminalized intelligence officials
March 26, 1985: High-ranking intelligence officials Wang Hsi-ling (汪希苓), Hu Yi-min (胡儀敏) and Chen Hu-men (陳虎門) are indicted for involvement in the murder of journalist and writer Henry Liu (劉宜良), known under his pen name Chiang Nan (江南). Liu had written articles critical of the KMT and its former leader Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), as well as an unauthorized and unflattering biography of the then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). Liu, a naturalized US citizen, was assassinated in California in October 1984 by Taiwanese gangsters reportedly assigned by Taiwan’s military intelligence. The incident grew into a political scandal and damaged Taiwan-US relations.
Residency permit quota for Chinese spouses increases
March 23, 1994: The Legislative Yuan doubles from 300 to 600 the annual quota of permanent residency permits for Chinese spouses of Taiwanese citizens. The quota began in 1992, with the allowance growing dramatically to its current 15,000 per year.
SARS declared statutory infectious disease
March 27, 2003: The Executive Yuan declares severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) a statutory infectious disease and set up special clinics in major hospitals. Taiwan’s first SARS patient was identified on March 14 the same year. In April, the outbreak aggregated when Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital was shut down for a month and a half after a mass infection was discovered among medical personnel. The WHO removed Taiwan from the list of affected areas in July. Later in the same year, Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control released an official record documenting 346 SARS cases of which 37 died.
Taiwan bans Japanese food imports
March 25, 2011: Two weeks after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Taiwan suspends food imports from five Japanese prefectures — Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba — over radiation concerns. Radioactive particles had been detected the previous day on a batch of clams and fava beans imported from Japan.
Strong earthquake injures many
March 27, 2013: A magnitude 6.1 earthquake hits Nantou County’s Renai Township (南投縣仁愛鄉), killing one person and injuring 97. Railway and high speed trains are temporarily stopped. The earthquake marks the third largest in Nantou since the devastating 921 earthquake in 1999.
Medicine
Taiwan’s first liver transplant succeeds
March 24, 1984: Taiwan’s first liver transplant is completed at Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in what is today New Taipei City. The transplant marks the first case of organ procurement from a brain-dead donor at a time when brain death was not yet considered legal death.
Extensive discussion and debate in the medical community followed the successful transplant. The Taiwan Medical Association issued a statement to recognize the legitimacy of the ground-breaking surgery later in the same year. In 1987, the Human Organ Transplantation Act (人體器官移植條例) took effect and legalized brain death. Taiwan became the first Asian country to do so.
Culture
Ang Lee movie wins four Oscars
March 26, 2001: Director Ang Lee’s (李安) martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) wins Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction, Best Original Score and Best Cinematography at the 73rd Academy Awards. A month earlier, the film pocketed four wins at the 54th British Film Awards, including Best Foreign Language Film and Best Director, Best Costume Design and Best Music.
Sports
Taiwan tops baseball tournament
March 25, 2001: Taiwan takes first place in the 21st Asian Baseball Championship, the main championship tournament between national baseball teams in Asia. Since 1983 it is also considered as the qualification for participation in the Summer Olympics. Baseball Federation of Asia game results show that Taiwan has won four championships since it began in 1954.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s