"Ten minus five equals five" is a mathematical equation. But if we get rid of five out of 10 political dissidents, the answer is not necessarily five. Political issues can not be regarded as math equations. The Kaohsiung Incident, which happened 20 years ago, explains this theory very clearly.
The KMT authorities thought that they could use coercive power to suppress the tangwai (
The event, also unexpectedly, aroused awareness of the need for reform within the political system. The trials brought to the forefront human right lawyers and the families of the victims, many of whom took over the mission of politicalreforms and played major roles in the democratic movement later on.
The DPP, founded in 1986, brought together the tangwai forces and made them the first political opposition party in Taiwan. This development was totally unexpected by the KMT, who believed the opposition could be wiped out by suppression.
Another lesson is that individuals with hindsight should not stamp out the farsighted.
What the staff members of the Formosa magazine (
These objectives, which were labeled as the conspiracies of "ambitious schemers" 20 years ago, were subsequently carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Then how should we characterize these reformers? Should they be called "ambitious schemers" or "farsighted?"
It is reasonable to be one of the people who are slow in seeing things. Yet if you happen to be one of the slow ones, then you probably try to suppress farsighted ideas by any means. Sometime later, however, you might realize that the farsighted people's ideas were actually good and you start to follow in their footsteps. This is not only embarrassing, it also delays progress.
We can find numerous examples of this in Chinese history. One of the most well known is the Constitutional Reform and Mod-ernization Movement(
Tsu Hsi, astonished by the progress of Western civilization, finally realized the need for reform. She even released an imperial edict to acknowledge her blunder. It came as little surprise that Tsu Hsi's reforms were almost identical to those called for by Liang and Kang.
Tsu Hsi's embarrassing experience reminds me a lot of James Soong (
The difference between Tsu Hsi and Soong is that at least Tsu Hsi was courageous enough to admit her mistakes. The only thing Soong has done is to shift his own responsibilities onto others.
There is no denying that the calls from the era of the Formosa magazine are now considered natural and correct political trends. If this is the way it should be, what was the point of creating all the fuss in the past? By the same logic, farsighted requests such as entering the UN under the name of "Taiwan" and establishing a new and independent country are still thwarted by the KMT and the New Party (including the Soong camp).
Instead of accepting the calls only after they become compelling, we should embrace good ideas as they come about.
Lee Shai-feng is a professor in the Department of History at Shih Hsin University.
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS