Taiwan would be “very foolish” to view US President Donald Trump as being more favorable than the previous US administration, US academic Francis Fukuyama said yesterday at a public lecture in Taipei.
“From Taiwan’s standpoint, you’d be very foolish to put any trust in him,” he said, calling earlier Trump suggestions of a possible move away from the US’ “one China” policy “a pure tactical calculation.”
“Essentially he was thinking to himself, maybe I can hold ‘one China’ policy hostage in order to get better terms from China in some future negotiation, which means he’s ready to discard Taiwan at the first instance if China offers him a better deal,” he said, adding that support for Taiwan in the US Congress and the Republican Party should prevent a deal with China at Taiwan’s expense.
In the speech sponsored by the Fair Winds Foundation, which was founded by former premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), Fukuyama talked on the challenges faced by the liberal international order as US power declines and numerous liberal democracies have seen the rise of right-wing populist movements.
Fukuyama dismissed comparisons between the Sunflower movement and right-wing populism.
“The Sunflower movement was a national-identity movement in many respects, but it was not an intolerant kind of aggressive nationalism of the sort that you see in Europe,” he said, linking it instead to traditional left-wing movements throughout Asia.
“The left-wing movements retain an important component of liberalism, because they actually want to maintain open societies.They’re not going to attack the media and they’re not going to create authoritarian political structures,” he said.
The Sunflower movement also lacked the anti-elitism and cult of personality that characterized right-wing populist movements in other countries, he said.
The Sunflower movement refers to student-led protests that began on March 18, 2014, in which students occupied the legislative chamber for almost 23 days to protest the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s handling of a proposed cross-strait service trade agreement.
While the economic conditions for a backlash against globalization exist in Asia, populism in the regime has been mainly mobilized by left-wing movement parties, Fukuyama said, citing the relative lack of immigration relative to other developed regions as an important reason for the differing response.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
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