"Of the dead say nothing but good," Plutarch advises. The problem is that in the case of Soong Mayling (
Soong learned to speak like a Western democrat during her years of schooling in the US, but her psychology was utterly feudal. Her hypocrisy and mendacity were astonishing, perhaps best represented by her convincing Henry Luce, the powerful boss of Life and Time magazines, that she and her husband Chiang Kai-shek (
Like old-fashioned bandits holding a village for ransom in a martial-arts novel, the Soong-Chiang-Kung clique saw China as nothing more than an area of operation for their depredations. Soong Mayling's brother, T.V. Soong (
Soong Mayling was feted in the US during World War II as exemplifying the spirit of Chinese resistance. Actually Luce's power and T.V. Soong's bribery bought Soong Mayling her moment of fame before the US Congress in 1943. What has been portrayed as a triumph for Mayling's charm was in fact a triumph of money politics.
The 1943 speech was to encourage the US to throw more money into the cesspit that was the KMT's anti-Japanese war effort. Most of the materiel that the US supplied was sold by Chiang and his cronies to the very Japanese they were supposed to be fighting. After the war US president Harry Truman calculated that the Chiang clique had filched US$750 million (as a proportion of US GDP this would be US$35 billion today) from the aid that was sent to them as a result of Mayling's efforts. "They're all thieves," he said, "every damn one of them."
Eventually the people of China got sick of the banditry of the Soongs, Kungs and Chiangs, and threw their lot in with the communists to kick the bandits out of China.
To Taiwan's sorrow they fled here, establishing a colonial regime depriving Taiwanese of political power and suppressing dissent with great brutality. They also continued their robberies, albeit slightly more circumspectly.
Soong Mayling's particular money spinner was the military welfare tax (
Soong valued only money and power, tried to secure Taiwan as a fiefdom for her awful family and left in a huff when she failed. The only good thing she ever did for Taiwan was to leave it. Now this evil and corrupt woman is where she belongs -- in Hell. The world is a cleaner, better place for that.
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
When a recall campaign targeting the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators was launched, something rather disturbing happened. According to reports, Hualien County Government officials visited several people to verify their signatures. Local authorities allegedly used routine or harmless reasons as an excuse to enter people’s house for investigation. The KMT launched its own recall campaigns, targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers, and began to collect signatures. It has been found that some of the KMT-headed counties and cities have allegedly been mobilizing municipal machinery. In Keelung, the director of the Department of Civil Affairs used the household registration system
RSS