The terrorist attacks on the two World Trade Center towers in New York, which resulted in the tragic deaths of people from 37 countries, has spurred a global alliance to end terrorism.
One of Taiwan's mainstream media hacks wrote, "The two towers of New York's World Trade Center symbolize the dual structure of democratic politics and the market economy, which take freedom as their rallying cry," and the destruction of the two towers marks "destruction that dual-structured 20th century civilizations -- which mistakenly thought they had triumphed -- brought upon themselves. ... [It is] savagery created by 20th-century civilizations themselves."
Wrong. When the two towers in New York collapsed, the bell tolled not for the dual structure of democratic politics and the free market economy but rather for terrorism, which mistakenly thinks it has triumphed.
Sixty years ago, after US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met on a battle cruiser in the Atlantic Ocean, they issued a joint statement, the famous "Atlantic Charter," proposing "common principles" for the world to follow "after the final destruction of Nazi tyranny." These included "four major freedoms" -- freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
Today the world has changed greatly. The Nazi terror has largely been eradicated and the communist terror has also largely disappeared. The freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom from want are already a reality in half the nations on earth, including Taiwan.
But freedom from fear hasn't been achieved because in countries that are free from terror domestically, terror may come from outside the nation's borders. It isn't something that any single country has the power to resist. And once mankind loses its freedom from fear, the remaining freedoms find themselves in a very precarious position.
Why does terror arise? Taiwan's mainstream media are never at a loss for words -- they speak of "reprisal breeding reprisal between the US and Islamic fundamentalists," "conflict characterized by a deep rupture between the Western and Islamic worlds," "radical Islam's cosmic war, in which death is looked upon as a return to paradise" and so on. Their theories are based on The Clash of Civilizations by US scholar Samuel Huntington, who viewed conflicts in the world as conflicts as between the Christian, Confucian and Islamic civilizations, without even truly grasping the concept of "civilization." Such a theory serves precisely to provide ready-made battle trenches for the terrorists' attacks on civilization.
Terrorism is neither a form of "civilization" nor a kind of religion. When Palestinian children pick up stones and confront gun-wielding Israeli troops who have occupied their homeland, it is David rising up against the giant Goliath. Israeli terrorism violates innocent children's freedom from fear, but certainly does not represent Jewish civilization. By the same token, by attacking the World Trade Center, bin Laden's terrorist organization is destroying human life, freedom and civilization with extremely barbaric and cruel violence. Can this be called "Islamic civilization?"
There is no religious fundamentalism in the world that espouses the slaughter of innocents. Anyone who uses religion to create a situation in which terrorism slaughters innocents and tramples on civilization betrays religion and can't be harbored by any sect whatsoever.
Islam has a concept of jihad or holy war, but jihad is war waged on a spiritual level, not the bloody terror of slaughtering innocents. Muhammad said, "The ideal jihad is war with oneself." There is no fundamentalism that permits the use of holy war to incite hatred toward innocent people. That is a degeneration -- rather than an uplifting -- of the spirit.
The basic distinction between religion and terrorism is that between cherishing human life and hating it. Humanity must put an end to terrorism, and every religion must take a clear stand against terrorism to avoid giving it a battle trench within which it can hide itself while waging war on civilization.
There are four types of terrorism. The first is international. Fascist terror and communist terror are of this sort. Its goal is to use terrorism to take over the world and completely eradicate human freedom. These two forms of international terrorism were eradicated in the 20th Century.
The second type is state terrorism, which involves using the state machine to carry out terrorist activities. China is the greatest practitioner of state terrorism, ruling over its own people by means of violence and terror. The "four major freedoms" have all been usurped in China. Although it doesn't have the power that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had to spread terrorism throughout the entire world, it is continuously expanding its influence, for example, by posing a terrorist threat against Taiwan, proliferating weapons to other terrorist countries, and so on.
The third type is terrorism carried out by criminal organizations. Bin Laden's activities are of this type. He both depends on state terrorism (the Afghan terrorist regime) and bears characteristics of international terrorism. The tentacles of his organization spread throughout the world.
The fourth type is individual terrorism, such as that carried out by those responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing.
Taiwan is a free country with a "dual structure." It has both a democratic political system and a free market economy. Externally, Taiwan is facing the terror of China's refusal to renounce the use of military force in bringing about unification. Internally there is "vassal terrorism," produced by Taiwan's local mainstream media. This locally produced vassal terrorism doesn't kill people with bombs or hijack airplanes with small knives. It employs only its own breath.
When Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji (
The results of the terrorist attack on the US are the opposite of what the cowards had in mind, however. Not only did they fail to topple the "dual structure" of democratic politics and the market economy, but they incited the US and the rest of the world to fight against a common enemy, and an international coalition is taking shape to fight against
terrorism.
As the US secretary of state said, the coalition covers law and law enforcement, politics, diplomacy, intelligence gathering, and appropriate military action. Countries around the world agree that everyone must join in, and the goal is not only to destroy bin Laden's terrorist organization, but to end terrorism altogether.
China is caught in a dilemma. It doesn't dare openly support bin Laden but also refuses to put an end to its own state terrorism. It falsely professes support for the US in its war on terror, yet it continues to use state terrorism to threaten Taiwan, which is unwilling to be swallowed up by China.
What course should the people of Taiwan follow in this battle to defend human freedom and civilization? Should they become a member of the coalition to end terrorism and contribute to humanity's effort to obtain freedom from fear? Or should they be manipulated by hot air from cowards and accept Chinese hegemony in the form of the "1992 consensus" and the "one China principle" and handing over the nation and its people as sacrificial offerings to China's state terrorism?
Ruan Ming is a visiting professor at Tamkang University and a former special assistant to the late Chinese Communist Party secretary-general Hu Yaobang (
Translated by Ethan Harkness
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS