The main duty of our government's representative to Washington is supposed to be to elaborate and defend Taiwan's policies to the US government, on Capitol Hill, in the State Department and in the White House. What we saw three days ago, however, was Stephen Chen (
Chen clearly is not capable of carrying out the task, set out above, he has been assigned and should be replaced immediately. And for his insubordination to the president he should be summarily sacked. But even so these actions will only deal with a symptom, it will not cure the disease that besets Taiwan's diplomatic culture, namely that it is populated by people who learned their craft under a regime with vastly different ideas and goals, and who have largely proved unable or unwilling to understand the very different country that has evolved over the last decade, and who are now passing on their outdated views to yet another generation of would-be diplomats.
How can we expect people so deeply versed in the ideology of Chinese nationalism to be eloquent and persuasive spokesmen for the kind of "Taiwan first-ism" advocated by Lee? Clearly an overhaul is needed in three areas: recruitment, training and promotion. People have to be recruited with a mindset more in tune with what Taiwan currently is and what it strives to be, rather than on the basis of their mastery of Chinese nationalist orthodoxy. They need to be trained along similar lines. But most of all, the current practice of assignment and promotion on the basis of seniority needs to give way to one in which the top posts go to those who are most eloquent and persuasive in defending Taiwan's interests.
Stephen Chen is a dire example of why this is necessary. As a veteran diplomat with a conservative personality, Chen is incapable of understanding the background for Lee's "two states" declaration, and cannot explain the reasons behind such a policy adjustment to Washington. Lee's redefinition of cross-strait relations is of course nothing more than stating the truth, a truth that has to be recognized before meaningful negotiation with China can happen. Chen, so deeply versed in "one China" ideology, cannot accept or defend this, which means that Taiwan's top diplomatic official to the US cannot do his job.
The US and Japan are the most important countries to Taiwan and it is absurd to appoint representatives to these countries on the basis of past political services rendered or seniority inside the diplomatic service. In this regard, Lee should bear some responsibility for not recruiting the best candidates to fill those crucial positions.
But the method of recruitment to the foreign service needs radical change. Taiwan is a small and vulnerable nation, which cannot afford to depend on isolationist, self-centered conservative thinking.
But Taiwan's foreign policy goals need changing also. It should not be obsessed with its competition for allies with China. Rather, precisely because Taiwan has very limited resources to count on, it should explore a variety of channels to intensively open new areas of contact outside of the international mainstream.
To do this, Taiwan needs people with a variety of different backgrounds in its diplomatic service. Professional diplomats with a single unified training and old-fashioned ideology cannot catch up with more creative thinking.
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
An article published in the Dec. 12, 1949, edition of the Central Daily News (中央日報) bore a headline with the intimidating phrase: “You Cannot Escape.” The article was about the execution of seven “communist spies,” some say on the basis of forced confessions, at the end of the 713 Penghu Incident. Those were different times, born of political paranoia shortly after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) relocated to Taiwan following defeat in China by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The phrase was a warning by the KMT regime to the local populace not to challenge its power or threaten national unity. The
Since taking office, President William Lai (賴清德) has been an active proponent of the Healthy Taiwan initiative. As a member of the Healthy Taiwan Promotion Committee, I have also contributed recommendations on various pharmaceutical policies. After the committee concluded its seventh meeting on Saturday last week, Lai announced that the government is considering a three-year suspension on the Drug Expenditure Target (DET) system’s routine drug price surveys, highlighting the need to further support drug supply resilience. While I am supportive of this policy direction, I must also stress the importance of maintaining our original objective of improving the quality of
RSS