Is anyone paying attention to current affairs in East Asia? Are people concerned about the conclusions reached at the ASEAN Summit, ASEAN+3 Summit and the East Asia Summit? The Taiwanese seem completely unaware of the first maritime security exercise conducted by the ASEAN Regional Forum in Singapore, let alone the "old" news mentioned above.
Recently, the region has seen a series of important developments.
The maritime security exercise, developments in energy policies and the ASEAN Charter all suggest that East Asian countries are writing their own history of regional integration.
Born in a free country, we should pay more attention.
But market-driven news selection is blurring our view of the world.
We used to blame international society for denying us our rights and ignoring our sovereignty, but most of us pay just as little attention to developments in our own neighborhood.
A worldview cannot be based on scandals and gossip.
John Donne once said: "No man is an island."
That applies to Taiwan, too. If we don't pay more attention to our region and the world in general, our island will in a sense be isolated.
But it is an isolation we cannot afford.
Yang Hao
Taipei
In an article published in Newsweek on Monday last week, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged China to retake territories it lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. “If it is really for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t China take back Russia?” Lai asked, referring to territories lost in 1858 and 1860. The territories once made up the two flanks of northern Manchuria. Once ceded to Russia, they became part of the Russian far east. Claims since then have been made that China and Russia settled the disputes in the 1990s through the 2000s and that “China
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Trips to the Kenting Peninsula in Pingtung County have dredged up a lot of public debate and furor, with many complaints about how expensive and unreasonable lodging is. Some people even call it a tourist “butchering ground.” Many local business owners stake claims to beach areas by setting up parasols and driving away people who do not rent them. The managing authority for the area — Kenting National Park — has long ignored the issue. Ultimately, this has affected the willingness of domestic travelers to go there, causing tourist numbers to plummet. In 2008, Taiwan opened the door to Chinese tourists and in
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
RSS