Scandals are always worth delving into. But clearly, not every incident that occurs becomes a scandal. So what makes for a real scandal?
What factors are involved? How does it develop?
With a methodological approach, all these questions can be answered to reveal the logic and effects of a scandal.
Regardless of one's approach, the latest incident, which has been dubbed the "Lo Shih Scandal" and involves the first family's housekeeper, Lo Shih Li-yun (
The people involved are Lo and a man surnamed Chen. They do not hold high positions. They were hired by the National Security Bureau, one as a servant, the other as a security guard.
The money: Lo's compensation over the past three years has been less than NT$1 million, not even NT$300,000 per year.
Neither of these two points merit any further comment. This is nothing like the Chung Hsing Bills scandal, when the main character, People First Party Chairman James Soong (
The money involved reached into the hundreds of millions of NT dollars. Nor is it anything like the question of how KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
The Chung Hsing Bills Finance affair merits the epithet "scandal," and so does the affair surrounding the Lien family fortune.
So why are we even talking about a "Lo Shih Scandal?"
What's more, Chen Ping-lin (陳炳林), a section chief in the National Security Bureau's Rules and Regulations Commission, has said that according to both an interpretation by the Council of Grand Justices and the trust and protection principle, Lo cannot be forced to return the compensation she received, which was less than NT$1 million.
Chen said, "Even if we wanted to, we might not be able to retrieve the money," because there has been no violation of administrative procedure.
In the Chung Hsing Bills scandal, on the other hand, Soong embezzled KMT party funds, and left the party without returning them. Only after being exposed was he forced to return the money.
There are no two ways about it: he took illegal possession of the money.
As for Lien, he has been a public servant all his life.
How could he have amassed such a substantial fortune? To this day, he is unable to give a clear account of the NT$36,280,000 he transferred to Wu Tse-yuan's (
So why has the Lo incident turned into a "scandal?"
The only reason is that it occurred in the home of the first family.
Any mistake committed by the first family, regardless of how insignificant, is played out before the whole nation.
But the attempt by the pan-blue camp and its supporting media to push the minor incident to its limit only shows that they have no substantive issues to work with. Instead, they used this trivial incident to launch a fierce attack. But instead of hurting their intended target, they may well have shot themselves in the foot.
Chin Heng-wei is editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017