As I wrIte articles in my old age, a thought comes to mind: Will this be the last one? The older I am, the more persistent the thought, but I have still written quite a few short pieces and published them in Juebiji (Collection of Final Writings, 絕筆集). The plural form of “writings” and “final” might seem contradictory, but at my age, every time I pick up a pen, it feels as if it is the last time. During the second half of my life, I was thrust into the Chinese world, utterly unprepared. I had to learn to speak, listen and write anew. As it was too late to learn from the ground up, I had to resort to using English-Chinese, French-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries, listening to other people, radio, television and movies, and reading every publication, magazine and book I could lay my hands on. Whether I understood or not, I devoured it all. As for Mandarin, I was barely able to speak “Taiwanese-style Mandarin” in its variety of accents from all over China — it all depended on who I was learning from — and I could manage a so-so understanding of Mainlanders speaking in their local accents. Writing was different: No matter what I did, I could not free myself from Japanese grammar and phrasing. After World War II, the faculty at National Taiwan University’s College of Law was in constant flux, and people were frequently replaced. It was not until Sa Meng-wu (薩孟武) became dean that the situation stabilized. It was the first time anyone had heard of Sa, and we knew nothing of his background or where he came from. He had studied in Japan and had a good understanding of which schools were Japan’s best. When he heard that Liu Ching-jui (劉慶瑞) and I had graduated from Japan’s
The tender for a planned Terminal 3 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport was finally awarded on Aug. 30. Since the tender for constructing the 640,000m2 terminal opened in 2018 — a combined tender for civil, electrical and mechanical engineering — the project has gone through many failed tenders, budget increases, redesigns and deadline extensions, and the tender has even been split into two parts. The civil engineering part was finally awarded on March 30, and the electrical and mechanical engineering parts last month. The new deadline for completing the terminal is June 2026 — five-and-a-half years behind the original deadline in December last year. The main tender for this project — the design — was awarded in 2015 to a collaboration of British architectural firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and CECI Engineering Consultants Inc Taiwan. The design — which was the top choice of 11 attending tender committee members, including six foreign experts or academics — has a wave-shaped roof, roof gutters, glass skylights, large glass curtain walls and a streamlined ceiling with 130,000 petal-shaped aluminum tubes for sound absorption. People have praised the design, calling it stunning. Who knew that a nightmare was soon to follow. According to the bidding documents submitted by the two firms, the estimated cost of the terminal’s main building was NT$22.12 billion (US$797.5 million at the current exchange rate), which is within the budget announced in the airport operator’s tender notice. The estimate’s items included engineering costs and scheduling, together accounting for 15 percent of the assessment points. According to tender rules, if a project’s estimated costs exceed the budget, the bidder will lose points. Bidders usually use the announced budget as orientation for their cost estimate, and the selection committee usually does not spend much time on figuring out whether the estimate is realistic; as
It is almost 20 years since mother tongue education was implemented in Taiwan’s elementary schools, and teaching materials and systems have since progressed. The Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法) stipulates that mother tongue education would become compulsory at junior-high and high school from next year — a giant step forward for the nation’s mother tongue instruction. At the moment, the biggest concern is that there might be a shortage of teachers. Although there are Hoklo — also known as Taiwanese — departments at universities, not many people devote themselves to mother tongue education after they graduate. The first mother tongue instructors started teaching in elementary schools in 2002, after passing the Ministry of Education’s language proficiency test, and more entered the field later through a university certification system. However, the mother tongue instructor job market was only able to meet the needs of elementary schools, and many instructors have quit or retired from teaching in the past two decades. Many teachers, civil groups, community colleges and promotion centers have been working hard to offer mother tongue classes, and to encourage students to take National Taiwan Normal University’s mother tongue certificate test so that they can serve as instructors at public schools. Still, the number of students getting the certificate is insufficient to meet the demand of junior-high and high schools. Hopefully the ministry will discuss with all Hoklo departments about providing certificate courses for Hoklo teachers, which would help meet high schools’ demand for instructors. Otherwise, many schools will find it difficult to recruit qualified teachers next year. The ministry should therefore come up with comprehensive complementary measures before the problem arises. Should there be a shortage of teachers, it would hurt the good intention behind the Development of National Languages Act, and it would not be beneficial to mother tongue education. How
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US President Joe Biden campaigned on a promise to restore US leadership in the global fight against climate change, and followed up with a dizzying number of executive orders and lofty targets to slash emissions. Yet nine months into his presidency, political, legal and economic obstacles have forced his administration to make several moves in support of fossil-fuel development at home and abroad, and raised questions about whether the Democrat is able to meet his commitments to clean energy. Setbacks include a judge overturning the administration’s effort to block new oil and gas leasing on federal lands, forcing it to offer millions of new acres for drilling, and rising retail gas prices that have led the White House to publicly ask the global oil cartel, OPEC, to boost production. Most importantly, heavy political opposition has forced the administration to put its centerpiece climate proposals, which would help deliver an April pledge to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, into a budget reconciliation bill that has an uncertain future in the closely divided US Congress. Democrats, who hope to pass the bill by the end of this month, are already talking about paring back investments and targets. The stakes could not be higher. If Washington fails to deliver ahead of a climate summit in November in Glasgow, Scotland, other global powers, including the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter, China, would be reluctant to slash their own emissions. “If that [climate-related legislation] went down before Glasgow, it would be a big mess for Biden and his administration,” said Bill Hare, director and CEO of the non-profit organization Climate Analytics. A Biden administration official said that legal and economic realities have compelled certain administration moves, and touted Biden’s progress so far. “We can do two things at once: achieve our climate goals while ensuring the energy transition is one that takes
A long-forgotten industrial fermentation process is allowing a small share of climate-changing carbon pollution to be turned into household products, with the first items made available this year. Backers say the process, known as gas fermentation, uses carbon captured from the air, industrial smokestacks, municipal solid waste or other sources to create “green chemicals” that can be turned into plastics, soaps, fabrics, perfumes and more. “A lot of people think stuff like this is science fiction. They don’t realize there are already plants running,” said Jennifer Holmgren, chief executive of LanzaTech, a carbon recycling company based in Chicago and with operations worldwide. Holmgren said the company’s process is similar to that used to make alcohol, but instead of sugar, its engineered microorganisms eat industrial emissions such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and more to produce ethanol. That, in turn, can be used to make the basic components for a variety of everyday products that typically rely on fossil fuels as their building blocks. In April, LanzaTech, together with Unilever and India Glycols, announced a new laundry detergent made using carbon emissions captured at a steel mill in China. In July, sportswear company Lululemon Athletica said it would start selling clothing made with polyester yarn created through LanzaTech’s gas fermentation. “It’s really about the circular economy. We imagine a world where you take your waste back and reuse it,” Holmgren said. Around the world, technological innovations to capture, store, reuse or replace carbon pollution are on the rise. Last week, the world’s largest plant designed to suck carbon dioxide from the air opened in Iceland, and US President Joe Biden announced a goal of converting the US airline industry to fully sustainable jet fuel by mid-century. Synthetic biology — as used for making LanzaTech’s products — could play a key part in the transition away from fossil fuels and to a
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Sept. 4 held a televised debate between candidates for its chairperson election. The four candidates for the vote, to be held on Saturday next week, represent a wasted opportunity for the KMT, which continues to be out of touch with public opinion on key issues, particularly on the nation’s sovereignty and the identity of Taiwanese. During the debate, the four candidates emphasized relations with China, with former Changhua County commissioner Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) claiming that he would invite Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to visit Taiwan and hold a cross-strait political summit, assuming the party wins the presidency in 2024. Chinese military threats toward Taiwan have over the past year increased to such a degree that they have become the focus of international policy discussions in Japan, the US, Australia and throughout western Europe. The KMT could not have picked a worse time to propose friendliness toward China. If the party has the delusion that a majority of Taiwanese would welcome such a policy, it needs look no further than a Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation survey on June 24, which showed that public support for the KMT had declined to 18.4 percent, despite support for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) reaching a five-year low of 22.6 percent. There are two possible reasons for the decline in KMT support: the party’s continued emphasis on the so-called “1992 consensus” and its opportunistic criticism of the DPP for criticism’s sake, even when facts negate its claims. For example, when Medigen Vaccine Biologics Co’s domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine was given emergency use authorization, the KMT claimed that the government was using the public as “guinea pigs” to test an “unsafe” vaccine that had only completed phase 2 clinical trials. However, according to WHO standards, the safety of a vaccine
With the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, China has remarketed its East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) concerns. Beijing urged the Taliban to make a clean break with the movement and asked the US to blacklist it again. While some are still debating whether the movement exists, it is not the core of the matter because its existence neither justifies China’s Uighur policy nor sheds light on its concerns after the withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan. Is China really worried, and if so, is it because of the movement? This question needs to be answered. When Chinese officials first acknowledged the existence of forced labor camps in East Turkestan (the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region) in October 2018, they celebrated the results of the camps by saying: “There has been no single terrorist violence in Xinjiang for two years.” Chinese authorities have repeated the statement every time they have had to defend the camps. Most recently, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said: “No violent terrorist incident has taken place in Xinjiang over the past four years.” This statement is one more proof that more than 3 million Uighur Muslims are in the camps. Through this statement, China has indirectly acknowledged that all members of the Uighur community who were able to bear arms had been arrested. No foreign-based separatist organization can act without the help of the people of its homeland. The main task of such organizations is to play a role in a region’s struggle for independence by guiding or organizing its own people in the homeland. Assuming that the ETIM exists, with whose help would it operate in East Turkestan? Who would lead it? Today, not only Uighur activists, but even the most cautious and China-loyal Uighurs are deprived of the opportunity to communicate with their mothers,
The Transitional Justice Commission last week announced a plan to transform the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, triggering debate at home and abroad. Yoshiyuki Ogasawara, a professor at Tokyo University, wrote an article, published in the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) on Sunday, in which he advocated maintaining the hall’s large bronze statue of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), along with the Republic of China Honor Guard, to preserve the atmosphere of the era to which they belong. Ogasawara also argued that from the perspective of a foreign visitor to Taiwan, the memorial hall provides an excellent educational opportunity about Taiwan’s democratic transition. The hall’s design and construction is all about the veneration of authoritarianism: from its location right at the heart of the nation’s capital city to its groundbreaking ceremony coinciding with Chiang’s birthday and the oversize bronze statue in the main hall, to which the visitor has to climb 89 steps — the age at which Chiang died. In addition, the decorative stone carving that runs through the center of the steps is evocative of traditional Chinese imperial architecture, and the main boulevard that runs through the park encourages visitors to raise their heads toward the heavens: All of these are authoritarian symbols. It is entirely proper that, in accordance with the legal remit of the commission, all authoritarian symbols in the complex should be amended. Removing these symbols — including the statue of Chiang — is not the only way. Rather than discussing whether to remove them, the discussion should be about how best to achieve “a lifting of martial law” in the spatial environment, in a way that simultaneously reminds Taiwanese of the damage caused by authoritarian rule and demonstrates the nation’s resolve to implement transitional justice. Here are some suggestions for how to combine
Better masks needed Last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic had just started, the Ministry of Economic Affairs quickly organized a mask taskforce to ensure that there were enough masks for all Taiwanese, so that we could protect ourselves from the virus. This year, when the situation in Taiwan took a turn for the worse, the nation was placed on a level 3 pandemic alert for three months. Just as the number of cases was falling and things looked more hopeful, a cluster of infections in a kindergarten was reported. This was not the first cluster in a kindergarten, but the government has not required vaccines for children, and so masks were the only line of defense available to the kids and those who came into contact with them. The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 is so virulent that masks offer little protection against infection if there is even the slightest gap, as caused by an improper fit of the mask. Having solved the problem of short supply of masks, the government now has to address the issue of making sure people are wearing them properly. University professors and clinicians can tell you that the virus spreads via aerosol transmission. On Facebook, Huang Hsuan (黃軒), a specialist in intensive care, said that if there is a gap equivalent to 1 percent of the active surface area of the mask, its ability to filter out the virus is reduced to 70 percent. If the gap is increased to 2 percent of the surface area, then the mask’s ability to filter out particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers falls to only 33 percent. Consequently, the integrity of the fit of the mask is crucial to masks’ ability to protect against inhalation of SARS-CoV-2, but the geometry of each individual’s face — the shape of the face, the height of
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For anyone hoping to see light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel over the next three to six months, scientists have some bad news: Brace for more of what we have already been through. Outbreaks will close schools and cancel classes. Vaccinated nursing home residents will face renewed fears of infection. Workers will weigh the danger of returning to the office as hospitals are overwhelmed, once again. Almost everyone will be either infected or vaccinated before the pandemic ends, experts agree. Maybe both. An unlucky few will contract the virus more than once. The race between the waves of transmission that lead to new variants and the battle to get the globe inoculated will not be over until the coronavirus has touched all of us. “I see these continued surges occurring throughout the world,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and an adviser to US President Joe Biden. “Then it will drop, potentially somewhat precipitously,” Osterholm said. “And then I think we very easily could see another surge in the fall and winter” of this year. With billions of people around the world yet to be vaccinated and little chance now of eliminating the virus, we can expect more outbreaks in classrooms, on public transport and in workplaces over the next few months as economies push ahead with reopening. Even as immunization rates rise, there will always be people who are vulnerable to the virus: Newborns, people who cannot or will not get inoculated and those who get vaccinated but have a breakthrough infection as their protection levels ebb. The next few months will be rough. One key danger is if a vaccine-resistant variant develops, although it is not the only risk ahead. “We’re going to see hills and valleys, at least
For Lauren Rash, it is the little things that have snarled production at her tent factory in Fletcher, North Carolina, like the many shades of black Velcro. Her company, Diamond Brand, just launched a new line of high-end wall tents called the Liminal, thick with vents and fasteners demanded by discerning campers. However, that means using lots of Velcro. And that is a problem, because black Velcro comes in many shades, depending on the type of raw plastic resin used to make it. “If I have older stock and put it with new,” the colors do not match, Rash said. “Black is not black is not black.” Before supply chain breakdowns and shortages swept the world in the wake the COVID-19 pandemic, buying the bits and pieces for an assembly line was often as easy as clicking a button and waiting a few days or, at most, a few weeks for delivery. Not anymore. Shortages of metals, plastics, wood and even liquor bottles are now the norm. The upshot is a world where buyers must wait for delivery of items that were once plentiful, if they can get them at all. Rash has piles of tents she cannot ship because she cannot get the right aluminum tubing for their frames, for instance, while others lack the right zippers. Along with the shortages come hefty price increases, which has fueled fears of a wave of sustained inflation. There is growing tension among US Federal Reserve policymakers over how to gauge the long-term impact on prices. Some Fed policymakers are more convinced than others that price pressures will recede after some of the supply chain disruptions are resolved. How this debate evolves could influence how quickly the Fed moves to reduce the pace of asset purchases launched at the start of the pandemic and how soon it lifts the policy interest rate
On Wednesday, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson held a news conference via video link to announce a major strategic defense partnership, dubbed “AUKUS.” In an indication of the sensitivity and strategic weight attached to the pact, discussions were kept under wraps, with the announcement taking even seasoned military analysts by surprise. AUKUS represents a significant escalation of the transatlantic strategic tilt to the Indo-Pacific and should bring wider security benefits to the region, including Taiwan. At the forefront of the trilateral partnership is a bold plan to transfer highly sensitive US and UK-developed advanced nuclear-powered submarine technology, which would enable the Royal Australian Navy to join a select group of nations capable of operating stealthy, long-range nuclear-powered attack submarines. For now it is unclear what form the technical assistance would take, or when Australia expects to receive the first deliveries, but it seems likely that to reduce risk and save time Canberra will select a proven, off-the-shelf design: either the Astute class hunter-killer submarine, which Britain’s Royal Navy operates, or the Virginia-class attack submarine operated by the US Navy. The announcement sounds the death knell for the troubled French-led Naval Group consortium, which was to deliver 12 conventionally powered submarines to Australia, but was mired with ballooning cost overruns, questions over the technical viability of the design and significant delays. Left unstated during the announcement, China was the elephant in the room. AUKUS promises to be much deeper than a commitment to help dig the Australian government out of a hole over its submarine procurement woes. The partnership reportedly is to establish new channels of information sharing between the three nations and facilitate the joint development of advanced technologies in areas including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, which should empower Australia to bolster its defense
Bilateral relations between the US and China appear to be heading nowhere but down, but China’s leaders seem not to have given up on their broad-based push for a more cooperative relationship — yet. Late last year, when it became apparent that Joe Biden would succeed Donald Trump as US president, China’s leaders set in motion a plan to salvage relations with their greatest rival. In December, through public remarks from Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), they offered the incoming administration a deal: If it would work to return the bilateral relationship to the “right track,” Beijing would cooperate on three of Biden’s four highest policy priorities — stopping climate change, rebuilding the economy and fighting COVID-19. Cooperation on Biden’s fourth top priority, racial equity, presumably would have shed unwanted light on Beijing’s ongoing atrocities against its Uighur population. In subsequent public communications, Chinese officials made this olive branch the core of its Washington-related propaganda, name-checking Biden’s policy priorities at various levels ad infinitum. The fact that Biden’s administration has yet to show any inclination to accept this bargain poses a significant problem for China’s leaders. Straining under the US’ still-substantial tariffs on China’s exports, criticism of Beijing’s repression at home and aggression toward Taiwan, demands for transparency about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to balance militarily against China — all of which pose risks to either their domestic legitimacy or their country’s security — China’s leaders need leverage over Washington if they are to improve their country’s international situation. Conversely, should such leverage fail to materialize, Beijing could decide that its pursuit of a more cooperative relationship with Washington is hopeless, pushing it — not to mention the international community — further along the path to the first period of long-lasting estrangement between two superpowers since the Cold
The recent editorial “Cannabis use booms on campuses” (Sept. 10, page 8) by retired military instructor Chen Hung-hui (陳宏煇) — whatever a person’s opinion on the use and dangers of the popular recreational drug are — contains a startling claim. Despite stating that an autopsy did not confirm the cause of death, Chen inferred that a student who had smoked cannabis had died as a result of the substance. If true, this would be the first recorded death worldwide from the use of cannabis and therefore a matter of grave concern and international attention, especially given the ubiquity of the use of the drug globally. The response in Taiwan to this editorial among those who have lived or studied in places where the drug is available, legally or otherwise, has been widespread ridicule. Comparisons across social media have been made to the infamous 1936 film Reefer Madness, directed by Louis Gasnier, which portrays the melodramatic events that ensue when high-school students are lured by pushers to try marijuana — from a hit and run accident, to manslaughter, suicide, conspiracy to murder, attempted rape, hallucinations and descent into madness from marijuana addiction. Chen said that the Executive Yuan announced at the end of last month that it would make cannabis the main target in the government’s fight against drugs and adopt a “triple reduction policy” to decrease supply, demand and harm of cannabis. One has to wonder why the government feels the need to crack down on the cannabis trade and use at this time. Of all the recreational drugs that pose a danger to the health and mental well-being of users, from a medical standpoint, cannabis is far less damaging or addictive than other drugs that are also available in Taiwan, such as opiates, methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine and ketamine. It is not
EDITORIAL CARTOON
In the early days of the 2016 US presidential election campaign, Fang Kecheng (方可成), a former journalist at the liberal-leaning Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly and then-doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, began fact-checking then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s statements on refugees and Muslims on Chinese social media, hoping to provide additional context to the reporting back home. However, his effort was quickly met with fierce criticism on the Chinese Internet. Some accused him of being a “white left” — a popular insult for idealistic, left-wing and Western-oriented liberals; others labeled him a “virgin,” a “bleeding heart” or a “white lotus” — demeaning phrases that describe do-gooders who care about the underprivileged, as he tried to defend women’s rights. “It was absurd,” Fang, now a journalism professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told the Observer. “When did caring for disadvantaged groups become the reason for being scolded? When did social Darwinism become so justified?” At the time of Trump’s election victory, he began to notice striking similarities between the “alt-right” community in the US and a group of social media users posting on the Chinese Internet. “Like their counterparts in the English-speaking sphere, this small, but growing community also rejects the liberal paradigm and identity-based rights — similar to what is called ‘alt-right’ in the US context,” Fang said, adding that in the Chinese context, the discourse often comprises what he considers anti-feminist ideas, xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism and Han-ethnicity chauvinism. Throughout the Trump presidency and immediately after the Brexit vote in 2016, researchers on both sides of the Atlantic began carefully studying the rise of the alt-right in English-speaking cyberspace. On the Chinese Internet, a similar trend was taking place at the same time, with some observing that users would additionally often strike a nationalistic tone and call for state intervention. In a
The US-led global “war on terror,” launched 20 years ago after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the US, was already faltering before US President Joe Biden took office. Now it might not recover from the blow delivered by Biden’s historic blunder in facilitating the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan. The flag of the world’s deadliest terrorists — responsible for killing more than 2,000 US soldiers since 2001 — flew above Kabul on the 20th anniversary of the attacks. By empowering the Taliban, Biden has empowered all violent Islamist groups, thus making the rebirth of global terror highly likely, and by betraying one ally — the Afghan government — he has made other US allies feel that Washington could abandon them, too, when the chips are down. The greatest radical Islamist victory in modern times will soon give rise to a terrorist super-state — a haven for transnational fanatics and a magnet for violent Islamists from around the world seeking training to carry out attacks back home. The Taliban’s “Islamic emirate” will lay the foundation for an international caliphate of the type sought by late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the hijackers who carried out the 2001 attacks. Whereas the short-lived “caliphate” of the Islamic State (IS) group filled a political vacuum in northern Syria before expanding into Iraq, the Taliban’s emirate has resulted from the defeat of the world’s mightiest power. The Taliban’s triumph will thus give the international jihadist movement an unprecedented boost, including for enlisting new recruits, with consequences that will play out for many years. The war on terror, which extends from the Middle East and southern Europe to Africa and Asia, will become increasingly difficult as its fronts multiply. This comes at a time when the US’ accelerating imperial decline is already weakening
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