EU, US should cooperate
The implicit agenda in France's heavy-lifting for China is to assert that Paris' foreign policy is independent from Washington's, as well as being payback for the perceived slight by the administration of US President George W. Bush on the Iraqi War ("Et tu, Chirac?" Jan. 28, page 1).
The EU would commit a "grave error" by selling arms to China. Such sales violate the EU's own code of conduct on human rights and of not proliferating arms to "areas of conflict." China has 500 missiles aimed at Taiwan, and selling more arms to China will further tip the military balance in its favor.
The US will not welcome the prospect of having American EP-3s intercepted by Chinese pilots flying French Mirages. The US and the EU should work together to defuse this possibility.
Vincent Wang Wei-cheng
Virginia
The blind do not fear guns
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
Apparently, they are not taking China's missiles seriously enough.
As a Taiwanese saying goes, "Blind people are not afraid of guns." I hope Lien and Soong are not blind. Probably, they will support the defensive referendum only after the first missile hits Taiwan.
Even if China launched its 496 missiles leisurely one after another at an interval of seven minutes per missile, Taiwan would be flattened in less than 58 hours. The referendum and sovereignty would be moot.
Lien and Soong claim that they already know the answers to the two referendum topics proposed by President Chen Shui-bian (
In the last four years, the opposition camp has opposed practically everything for the sake of opposition. The most typical opposition figure is Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
In a stark reminder of China’s persistent territorial overreach, Pema Wangjom Thongdok, a woman from Arunachal Pradesh holding an Indian passport, was detained for 18 hours at Shanghai Pudong Airport on Nov. 24 last year. Chinese immigration officials allegedly informed her that her passport was “invalid” because she was “Chinese,” refusing to recognize her Indian citizenship and claiming Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet. Officials had insisted that Thongdok, an Indian-origin UK resident traveling for a conference, was not Indian despite her valid documents. India lodged a strong diplomatic protest, summoning the Chinese charge d’affaires in Delhi and demanding
The wrap-up press event on Feb. 1 for the new local period suspense film Murder of the Century (世紀血案), adapted from the true story of the Lin family murders (林家血案) in 1980, has sparked waves of condemnation in the past week, as well as a boycott. The film is based on the shocking, unsolved murders that occurred at then-imprisoned provincial councilor and democracy advocate Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) residence on Feb. 28, 1980, while Lin was detained for his participation in the Formosa Incident, in which police and protesters clashed during a pro-democracy rally in Kaohsiung organized by Formosa Magazine on Dec.
Watching news footage of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with their counterparts across the Taiwan Strait, I could not help but feel a profound sense of temporal displacement. As a member of the generation born after the lifting of martial law and raised under modern civic education, I truly want to ask the KMT: “Do you not see who the true villain is?” In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party used a bloody civil war to drive the KMT into exile in Taiwan. In the decades that followed, it has sought to completely erase the existence
President William Lai (賴清德) on Sunday congratulated Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on their historic landslide victory in Japan’s general election. The LDP secured the largest single-party majority in post-World War II Japan, winning 316 seats. The win is expected to strengthen ties with Japan’s allies and potentially deter Chinese aggression in the region. American Institute in Taiwan Director Raymond Greene on Monday said that under Takaichi’s leadership, he anticipates deeper coordination among the US, Japan and Taiwan to promote regional stability and prosperity. US President Donald Trump has also shown his strong support for Takaichi,
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