Former US presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all met with the Dalai Lama. The only recent former president who never met him is Donald Trump. Tibetans living in exile in India are divided into two main groups — the Central Tibetan Administration headed by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Youth Congress, which seeks Tibetan independence. There is also a group so fully integrated into India that it serves as a special operations unit called the Special Frontier Force, which cannot wait to get its hands on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. An important thing to know about the Dalai Lama is that he does not call for Tibetan independence. He seeks a high degree of autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule. Furthermore, the Dalai Lama calls for unification between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait — as long as it happens under the values of democracy and human rights. This view is different from India’s “one China” policy. India does not recognize Taiwan and Tibet as belonging to China, and if China does not recognize “one India,” India will not recognize “one China.” In the past few years, whenever the Dalai Lama spoke about visiting Taiwan, the media here only reported that he would like to visit. However, Indian reporting says that the Dalai Lama has a precondition for visiting Taiwan, namely that he first wants to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing. In other words, he would visit Taiwan under the premise of “one China,” but India would never agree to that. The strategy of India’s foreign affairs departments regarding the Dalai Lama is to prevent him from visiting either side of the Taiwan Strait. They would prefer that he stayed in India, so they often refuse to grant him visas. When dealing with the Tibetan
In the past few years, especially after the 2017 Chinese Communist Party national congress, there have been disturbing signals that China is reconsidering its peaceful approach to Taiwan and taking steps toward armed unification. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has repeatedly called for complete national “reunification” as an inevitable requirement for realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Xi in 2019 dropped the term “peaceful” when referring to unification with Taiwan, but included it again last year. China could possibly attempt an invasion before Aug. 1, 2027, the centenary of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), but there remain unanswered questions about the capabilities of China’s amphibious assault units and airborne troops. Taiwan knows the mammoth challenge it faces and has begun to upgrade its defensive capabilities, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created new discussions over deterrence, defense planning and preparedness, weapons, military tactics and contingencies. Moreover, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has instructed the National Security Council to create a task force on Ukraine to monitor developments and the possible impact on Taiwan’s security. I have had the privilege of speaking with officials working closely on Taiwan’s national security issues. My biggest takeaway from these conversations was that, unlike multiple recent analyses only focusing on military and tactical lessons from the Russian invasion, Taiwan has also taken on board unconventional contingency planning lessons along with conventional military tactical lessons from the ongoing conflict. It is taking steps toward not only deterring China and defending its territory, but also planning civilian contingencies in the event of a protracted war. The first major lesson that Taiwan has learned from the Ukraine conflict is about maintaining the nation’s supply of food. The Russian-Ukraine war has also been termed a war between two agricultural powerhouses. During the course of the war, Russia has, on multiple occasions, moved to cripple Ukraine’s agrarian
It has been just over a year since massive blackouts hit Taiwan. Soon after yet another blackout on March 3, the Ministry of Economic Affairs put forward a NT$100 billion (US$3.39 billion) budget to improve the power grid, including direct supply of regional power to science parks, accelerating renewable energy grid integration, consolidating the grid, grouping junction substations, resolving power supply bottlenecks and building indoor substations. Many of them are projects that have been ongoing for some time. The government has made promises — as it does every time a major power outage happens — that it will invest billions to increase grid resilience, such as the Smart Grid Master Plan announced in 2011 that is estimated to cost NT$139.9 billion, the NT$16.3 billion power distribution resilience plan in 2018 and the recently announced NT$100 billion plan. Investment is helpful in solving problems and hopefully Taiwan Power Co will complete the key infrastructure upgrades. The causes of power grid outages include natural disasters, which are low-probability, high-impact events such as typhoons, earthquakes and floods, with their intensity, location and duration difficult to predict; or high-probability, low-impact problems such as generator system or transmission line failures. Grid resilience, which includes infrastructure resilience and operational resilience, is the ability to avoid and recover quickly from accidents. Grid resilience indicators based on operational performance include the extent and number of households affected by power outages; the duration of power supply suspension to communications, water and health services; and time to recovery. The root causes of the major power outages are not insufficient capacity or transmission lines, but employee negligence, grid structure and system equipment maintenance. To tackle these issues, grid resilience needs to be increased comprehensively, which can be achieved through grid strengthening and adaptation, immediate response, grid modernization and sustainability. Operational grid resilience is the ability to prepare
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A massive recall is getting most of the blame for a US baby formula shortage, but experts have said that these products have long been vulnerable to this type of crisis due to decades-old policies that have allowed a handful of companies to corner the market. Those government rules — aimed at assuring safe, affordable formula — are getting renewed scrutiny as US President Joe Biden’s administration rushes to import formula from Europe. “There’s perfectly good and safe baby formula available around the world. We just don’t have access to it,” said Bindiya Vakil, CEO of Resilinc, a supply chain analytics firm. “We’ve created this problem by not setting up an infrastructure for imports.” Abbott Nutrition said on Tuesday that it expects to restart its shuttered Michigan plant on Saturday next week and begin shipping new formula to stores about three weeks later. The factory is the largest of its kind in the US and has been closed since February after an inspection found sanitation problems and its products were recalled. The circumstances hobbled supplies of popular formulas and specialty formulas for children with rare medical conditions. The company said it received permission from regulators to release 300,000 cans of its EleCare specialty formula for babies with allergic and digestive disorders. The product was not part of the recall. Lawmakers are holding three hearings on the issue this week, calling on company executives, government regulators and outside experts to testify. The attention could spur changes to government safety and contracting rules that have been in place since the 1980s and favor large US manufacturers that are capable of navigating the complex requirements. Baby formula is one of the few US products essentially unaffected by globalization, with 98 percent of the supply manufactured domestically. Four companies account for about 90 percent of the market: Abbott, Reckitt, Nestle
We all tend to follow habits at work and in other aspects of our lives. I generally work best in the morning and hate working after dinner. Our habits usually reflect preferences, learning, or a combination of the two — or, as Charles Duhigg notes in his book The Power of Habit, the mere repetition of an act might generate a routine. My research shows that criminals are not all that different from law-abiding citizens when it comes to sticking to a routine, possibly as a result of their experience, their tendency to specialize and their belief that they have developed an ideal strategy. Police departments are catching on, with the assistance of an increasingly common tool: algorithms. Because algorithms use patterns in data to predict future behavior, they can forecast the movies someone might like on Netflix or the books a person might buy on Amazon, but they can also help law-enforcement agencies fight crime. Some algorithms calculate prison inmates’ future recidivism. Others underpin predictive-policing tools, which generate crime forecasts with the aim of optimizing patrols. Investments in predictive analytics have led to a reallocation of resources — including through different policing strategies and alternative sentencing — and thus alter the probability of arrest or detention across individuals. For this reason, it is important to understand whether these algorithmic tools reduce crime, and whether they do so without generating biases against certain groups. The most elaborate and well-known predictive-policing software has evolved from hotspot maps. These programs operate on the principle that areas recently subject to high numbers of crimes are more likely to have high near-term crime rates. Thus, law-enforcement agencies focus on these areas to deter the largest number of criminals. While researchers have shown that these statistical algorithms have greater predictive power than simple averages, proving that they
Retired Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen (陳日君) has no illusions about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); neither does Pope Francis. However, the two men have taken diametrically opposite approaches in how they deal with the Chinese communists: The former, vocal and active, has been arrested and faces, at the age of 90, a potential jail sentence; the latter is silent. For critics of the pope’s reticence on calling the CCP out on human rights abuses — its campaign of cultural genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang, its crackdown on the Hong Kong democracy movement and the arrest of a nonagenarian bishop — his silence is akin to appeasement of the CCP, and betrayal of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong and China. Supporters of the pope’s position say his hands are tied, having signed an accord in 2018 with Beijing that gives him final say over the appointment of Chinese bishops, but only from a short list of candidates carefully vetted by the party. It is arguable how much the pope gains from the agreement. He has been reluctant to speak about it in public — the details remain “secret,” known only to CCP officials and senior Vatican figures. However, he said in an interview in September last year that an uneasy dialogue is better than no dialogue at all. He has likened relations with Beijing to the “small steps” policy started in the 1960s that eventually secured more freedom for Catholics in Soviet bloc countries in eastern Europe, saying that those successes had been achieved “slowly, slowly, slowly.” In the meantime, any public comments by Pope Francis on Hong Kong, Xinjiang or Taiwan, for example, that Beijing might consider interfering in its “domestic affairs” might result in an abrupt end to the fragile accord. Zen is unconvinced that the Vatican’s approach to the CCP will
US President Joe Biden has done it again — for the third time in the past nine months he has stated that the US will defend Taiwan. And for the third time, his administration officials have rushed to “clarify” that US policy toward Taiwan “has not changed” and Washington still follows its “one China policy.” That is the same scenario that played out with two other presidents. When asked the question posed to Biden in 2001, then-US president George W. Bush said Washington would do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression. In 2020, then-US president Donald Trump answered the question with a menacing tone conveying clarity and resolve: “China knows what I’m gonna do.” On both occasions, as with Biden, presidential aides were quick to correct any misimpression about a change in US policy. Now that it has happened five times, with three different presidents, the established pattern can mean only one of three things: Explanation one: Over a span of 21 years, three US presidents were uninformed, unprepared, careless and/or confused about US policy on a critical national security issue that could theoretically result in a war between two nuclear powers. Each time, their subordinates rushed to correct the record and prevent a potential crisis based on strategic miscalculation across the Taiwan Strait. Aides in the US Department of State and elsewhere worried that a US security guarantee to Taiwan would encourage Taipei either (a) to act precipitously, such as by declaring formal independence, or (b) to relax its own self-defense efforts and rely entirely on the US to protect it. The former course would supposedly provoke a violent Chinese response; the latter, a show of weakness, would almost certainly invite Chinese aggression. (President Tsai Ing-wen [蔡英文] shows no disposition to take either approach, but some US officials
Taiwanese democracy advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲), imprisoned by Chinese authorities on false charges, was finally released and returned to Taiwan last month. A human rights advocate, Lee was charged with “subversion of state power” and sentenced to five years behind bars. There is also the case of Morrison Lee (李孟居), a political consultant to Pingtung County’s Fangliao Township (枋寮), who was accused of espionage by the Chinese authorities, sentenced to 22 months in prison and deprived of his “political rights” (prevented from leaving China) for a further two years. To date, Morrison Lee has been detained in China for nearly three years and there are no signs that the Chinese Communist Party intends to release him any time soon. Contrast this treatment with that of the New Party’s Wang Ping-chung (王炳忠) and other party members who allegedly received funding from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office to set up organizations in Taiwan. Although the alleged spy ring was suspected of collecting information relating to serving and retired members of the military and civil servants, as they had not yet recruited anyone, prosecutors had insufficient evidence to prove that the actions of Wang and the others constituted a clear and present threat to national security. For this reason, the group was acquitted at both the initial trial and a subsequent appeal. The difference between Taiwan’s and China’s judicial systems is like night and day. As a liberal democracy, the common phrase “no bending of the law and no indulgence of criminality (勿枉勿縱)” perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Taiwan’s judicial system. However, with an enemy on the other side of the Taiwan Strait that could launch an invasion at any moment, Taiwan’s judiciary often appears utterly ignorant of the threat facing the nation. Local media have reported that many members of Taiwan’s legal system believe that the verdicts of judges are
Chang not a good choice In April 2019, former premier Simon Chang (張善政) said that “a president who majored in liberal arts only knows how to take part in demonstrations, but one who studied science and technology can solve problems.” He went on to say: “Opposing nuclear power is like Boxer rebels worshiping a bodhisattva, but I only talk about technology, not beliefs.” These comments were intended to lampoon President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who holds a doctorate of law, and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, which wants to scrap nuclear power. They were also meant to flaunt Chang’s own background in science and technology, and claim that it made him better qualified to be president. Is that not a case of blatant academic prejudice? A few months later, Chang went even further by accusing the DPP government of illegally bugging people on his list of national political advisers, and he called on Tsai to publicly take an oath in front of statues of the deities Guan Gong and Matsu. How could anyone call this “only talking about technology and not beliefs?” What can you call it, other than a self-inflicted slap in the face? On Wednesday last week, news broke that Chang had accepted an invitation from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to “parachute” into Taoyuan and run as its mayoral candidate later this year. When talk show host Frances Huang (黃光芹) heard about this, she slammed Chang for lying when he was asked not long ago whether he would run for mayor of Kaohsiung, and he replied that he wanted to go into farming in Hualien and had no intention of getting involved in politics. This U-turn shows how quickly and easily Chang can go back on his word. Chang’s prejudice against the liberal arts and his hairpin reversal about standing for election reveal his propensity for spouting
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In just the past few weeks, at least 92 confirmed and 28 suspected cases of monkeypox have been reported across Europe, Canada, Israel, the US and Australia. That number stands to grow as surveillance expands, Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO said on Monday last week. This is concerning, but no reason for anyone to panic. The global response to these case clusters is so far working as it should. Scientists are sequencing and analyzing the genes of virus samples. Public health agencies are tracking down people who might have been exposed. Education efforts are underway to make healthcare workers and any vulnerable communities aware of the outbreak. Governments are preparing to deploy vaccines and antivirals as needed. Nevertheless, the curious cases raise questions about why this transmission is happening now and who is at risk. Scientists are scrambling to answer a key question: Why now? Two strains, or clades, of monkeypox are known to exist, and the one currently circulating seems to be the milder West Africa one. In the past, monkeypox cases have typically arisen via animal-to-human transmission in Central or West Africa, where the virus is endemic. “It’s what we call a dead-end infection,” said Grant McFadden, director of Arizona State University’s Biodesign Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines and Virotherapy. “It can spread from human to human by direct contact, but the chain tends to peter out pretty quickly.” This makes the current degree of human-to-human transmission concerning. One possible explanation is that the virus simply has had more opportunities to infect people. Routine administration of the smallpox vaccine, which also protects against monkeypox, was ended in the US and other countries in the 1970s — the world was declared free of smallpox in 1980. This means that a sizable chunk of the population has no existing immunity to monkeypox. People born during the era of
China is trying to navigate its biggest COVID-19 outbreak without a tool that it could have adopted months ago, the kind of vaccines that have proven to offer the best protection against the worst coronavirus outcomes. As early as the spring of 2020, a Chinese pharmaceutical company, Fosun Pharma, reached an agreement to distribute — and eventually manufacture — the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech. It still has not been cleared in mainland China, despite being authorized for use by separate authorities in Hong Kong and Macau. Now health experts say that the delay — a result of putting politics and national pride above public health — could lead to avoidable COVID-19 deaths and deeper economic losses because whole cities would be locked down to insulate the country’s unprotected population. “The biggest issue is about the delay of the reopening,” said Xi Chen (陳希), a health economist at Yale University’s School of Public Health. “The consequences will be huge — the supply chain disruption, the disruption to all kinds of service sectors.” Studies have consistently shown that vaccination with mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna offer the best protection against hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Chinese vaccines made with older technology proved fairly effective against the original strain of the virus, but much less so against more recent variants of SARS-CoV-2. As this evidence became clearer, even countries that initially used Chinese-made vaccines and some other less effective Western-made vaccines have turned to mRNA vaccines for booster shots and new vaccinations — but not China. Chinese regulators have not publicly said why they have not acted — the mRNA vaccines are authorized in much of the world, and have proven safe and effective in hundreds of millions of people. However, a Chinese health official and another person directly involved in the negotiations said on
During a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on Monday, US President Joe Biden for the third time intimated that the US would take direct military action to defend Taiwan should China attack. Responding to a question from a reporter — Would Washington be willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan? — Biden replied with an unequivocal “Yes.” As per Biden’s previous deviations from the script of the US’ longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity” — maintaining a deliberately nebulous position over whether the US would intervene militarily in the event of a conflagration between Taiwan and China — the White House moved quickly to walk back the comment. “As the president said, our policy has not changed. He reiterated that policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters. “He also highlighted our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to help provide Taiwan the means to defend itself.” Biden made similar comments in October last year during a CNN program. When asked whether the US would come to Taiwan’s defense, Biden responded: “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.” In August last year, Biden listed Taiwan among nations the US has a commitment to defend, live on ABC News. Predictably, Beijing reacted with rage at Biden’s latest remark, while Taipei diplomatically thanked Biden for his “rock solid” support. In Washington, some politicians and pundits have criticized Biden for making yet another “gaffe” and needlessly upsetting Beijing, while others have said Biden’s slip of the tongue might encourage, rather than deter, Chinese aggression and could even provoke pre-emptive military action. However, while Biden is often characterized by the Washington commentariat as a walking gaffe machine — and not without some justification — perhaps in this instance, rather than
On May 5, the US Department of State made major changes to the US-Taiwan relations fact sheet on its Web site. It removed statements in the previous text that said it acknowledges Beijing’s “one China” position, and that the US does not support Taiwanese independence. Triggering wide debate, this update is a follow-up to the speech outlining US policy toward China delivered by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed and expressed its appreciation for the update, and reiterated Taiwan’s position on working with countries that share similar values to safeguard a rules-based international order. The changes have drawn fire from Beijing, which described the US’ move as “a petty act of fictionalizing and hollowing out the ‘one China’ principle.” The fact sheet points to a significant warming in relations between the US and Taiwan, and Washington’s plans to put more emphasis on bilateral diplomatic interaction in due course. Under the administration of former US president Donald Trump, US policy on relations with Taiwan has become more well-elucidated and transparent. China has become the US’ biggest rival since the start of a trade war. As COVID-19 spread from Wuhan, China, to countries around the globe, Beijing has stepped up military provocations in the Indo-Pacific region. As a nation on the front line of authoritarian expansion, Taiwan occupies a strategic position in the first island chain. Commenting on Taiwan’s strategic value, the late US general Douglas MacArthur described Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” Under the Trump administration, US arms sales to Taiwan, in terms of quality and quantity, reached a new high. It also declassified former US president Ronald Reagan’s “six assurances” to Taiwan to reaffirm a long-term and robust bilateral security relationship. Following then-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s lifting of all restrictions on exchanges with Taiwan, Cabinet-level
Toward the end of last month, a live-in nanny in Shanghai was discharged from hospital after recovering from COVID-19, but could not go back to her previous place of residence, so she lived in a public telephone booth for several days. Heaven knows how she managed to eat, sleep and cope with her other everyday needs. In the end, it was not Shanghai authorities who came to her aid, but a non-governmental organization — the local branch of the Blue Sky Rescue organization from her hometown, Ningguo, in Anhui Province. If she was “rescued” and taken back to Anhui, she was probably put in group isolation. Unable to find a place to stay in “inclusive” Shanghai, she was, hopefully, not accused of “bringing the virus” to her home province. On Dec. 30 last year, in reply to an Agence France-Presse reporter’s question, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) said: “You can be happy that you are living in China during the fight against the epidemic. The Chinese people have secured a strategic victory, which I’m sure you’ll agree is most reassuring.” The nanny had the same good fortune to live in China during the pandemic and spend a few days in a Shanghai phone booth. No doubt she also found the experience “most reassuring.” If she dared to say otherwise, she would make China look bad, and Shanghai even worse. In that case, she would probably have been “contained and controlled” by Shanghai officials, or else “hunted down” rather than “rescued” by a team from her home province. Some of the Chinese Communist Party’s favorite propaganda catchphrases are “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” a “harmonious society,” the “Chinese dream” and “patriotic education.” This incident shows the true face of such slogans. If and when Shanghai suppresses its COVID-19 outbreak, no
It has been more than a week since the May 15 terrorist incident at a Presbyterian church in southern California and Taiwanese Presbyterians who have been reading about the shooting are horrified by what has happened, even though they themselves were not there. Indeed, many Taiwanese, who are not used to this kind of thing, will be feeling traumatized. Officials in California said the incident was motivated by a political hatred of Taiwan, but from the age and sociopsychological profile of the perpetrator, coupled with the international political and diplomatic situation, it is perhaps not so much an example of an internal Taiwanese “provincial complex” and more a sign of foreign aggression. First, why attack a Taiwanese Presbyterian church in California and not the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan? The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan is associated with political activism and many prominent figures, such as former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Taiwanese democracy pioneer Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) and former director of mental health at the WHO Lin Tsung-yi (林宗義), were Presbyterians. However, a survey by Academia Sinica showed that only about 4.5 percent of the population of Taiwan is Christian and about 1.5 percent is Catholic. Contrast this with the 80 percent of Taiwanese who identify as Taiwanese and can therefore be considered, in a broad sense, of being pro-Taiwanese independence. Attacking overseas Taiwanese because of a provincial complex makes the shooter an enemy of Taiwanese. Attacking Taiwanese Presbyterians in California still conveys the warning against Taiwanese independence advocacy, but it is less overtly anti-Taiwanese. The 68-year-old alleged perpetrator is a second-generation Mainlander born in Taichung, who went to university in Taiwan and taught at university before emigrating to the US, showing that he comes from a family background of a certain degree of means. However, he later separated from his wife and his life started to
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With global attention focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine, China’s territorial expansionism in Asia — especially its expanding border conflict with India — has largely fallen off the international community’s radar. Yet, in the vast glaciated heights of the Himalayas, the world’s demographic titans have been on a war footing for more than two years and the chances of violent clashes rise almost by the day. The confrontation began in May 2020. When thawing ice reopened access routes after a brutal winter, India was shocked to discover that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had stealthily occupied hundreds of square kilometers of the borderlands in its Ladakh region. This triggered a series of military clashes, which resulted in China’s first combat deaths in more than four decades and triggered the fastest-ever rival troop buildup in the Himalayan region. India’s counterattacks eventually drove the PLA back from some areas and the two sides agreed to transform two battlegrounds into buffer zones. However, over the past 15 months, little progress has been made to defuse tensions in other areas. With tens of thousands of Chinese and Indian troops standing virtually at attention along the long-disputed border, a military stalemate has emerged, but stalemate is not stagnation. China has continued to alter the Himalayan landscape rapidly and profoundly in its favor, including by establishing 624 militarized border villages — mirroring its strategy of creating artificial militarized islands in the South China Sea — and constructing new warfare infrastructure near the frontier. As part of this effort, China has completed a bridge over Pangong Lake — the site of past military clashes — that promises to strengthen its position in a disputed area of India’s Ladakh region. It has also built roads and security installations on territory that belongs to Bhutan to gain access to a particularly vulnerable section of India’s
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