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.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
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A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to