Even if China's proposed anti-secession law is passed next month, it will not apply to Taiwan for several reasons.
First, as a domestic law, the anti-secession legislation does not affect Taiwan, a political entity separate from China.
Second, it can only prohibit future secessions. Taiwan has been separate from China for 110 years and is exempted by the grandfather clause.
Third, the war between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the communists had nothing to do with the Taiwanese. The KMT had nowhere to go after being defeated by the communists except for Taiwan.
Fourth, Taiwan was annexed and then ceded permanently by the Qing Dynasty, a foreign invader of China.
Fifth, following world trends, Taiwanese have gone from colonialism and dictatorship to democracy and freedom. They will never go back to dictatorship.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) is little more than a dictator. Unfortunately, almost one-quarter of the world lives under the Chinese Communist dictatorship.
Under the anti-secession law, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) might be investigated for his alleged ceding of China's border territories to Russia and India during his presidency.
These ceded territories are many times the size of Taiwan. If this secession is true, it will contradict Beijing's insistence that no part of it territory leave the Chinese fold.
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Recently, Taipei’s streets have been plagued by the bizarre sight of rats running rampant and the city government’s countermeasures have devolved into an anti-intellectual farce. The Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office has attempted to eradicate rats by filling their burrows with polyurethane foam, seeming to believe that rats could not simply dig another path out. Meanwhile, as the nation’s capital slowly deteriorates into a rat hive, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection has proudly pointed to the increase in the number of poisoned rats reported in February and March as a sign of success. When confronted with public concerns over young
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
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