Illogical opinions
The opinion piece by Huang Tien-lin (黃天麟) contains glaring logical fallacies (“Punishing the wealth creators not helpful,” May 18, page 8).
Huang suggests that because both the capital gains tax and Marxism both appeal to fairness and justice, and Marxism has been disastrous for millions, therefore the capital gains tax must also be doomed to disaster. This is a post hoc fallacy. In addition, Huang implies that because Beijing does not levy a capital gains tax, neither should Taiwan. This is a tu quoque fallacy.
An opinion piece can be expected to contain opinion, but it must also follow the common practice of reasoned discussion.
Stu Chuang Matthews
Taipei
Taiwan-SKorea science link
Jean Cocteau’s 1929 novel Les Enfants Terribles was more than a work of succinct and elegant prose. The talented author managed that rare gift of creating a phrase that has not only transcended translation, but has also passed into English loaded with a pejorative message aimed at the sophomoric and epicurean. However, the two siblings at the heart of the story are in essence products of a broken and fractured upbringing who must struggle for their own existence.
Whilst the stereotyped view of this phrase is a long way from the relationship between South Korea and Taiwan or their relations with the wider world (they are more magnifiques than terribles) there is nevertheless more than just a declamatory sense in this literary comparison. Both Taiwan and South Korea, born as they were out of the ashes of colonialism and war, have had to fight tough over the past half-century.
On Thursday, the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Daejeon, South Korea, was formally opened by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, IBS president Oh Se-jung and a host of dignitaries, including former Academic Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲). It is hoped this new institute will serve as the bridgehead for major scientific investigation in the country.
Nobel Prize-winning Lee was an appropriate emissary for his country as the former head of Academic Sinica. While such an institute is a great example to the IBS, it also is a great advocate for what Ben Martin of the University of Sussex argues is the importance of establishing and utilizing links between actors and institutes in the scientific fraternity.
Physical relations and locations should not be seen as some kind of historical penumbra, shadowing the uplands of a 24-hour society and the world of Web 2.0. The connections that arise between actors and institutes have been shown to be a success, as in the misappropriated phrase “think global, act local.”
The president of Academia Sinica, Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠), intimates that the relationship between universities, students and academics at the institute is growing stronger and that far from practicing some kind of inward-looking recursive and inchoate didacticism, the institute is ever closer to becoming what Leibniz termed an entelechy in his Monadology — the full realization of being.
Akin to a fledgling flying the nest for the first time, so the IBS, while full of confidence, will also need guidance and a little help from its friends. With its history, record of achievement and a vision for the future, the Academia Sinica, it is hoped, will be one such friend.
It is also to be hoped that unlike the siblings in Cocteau’s novel, the two countries can work together to utilize the networks that exist between them to establish their respective places as lighthouses of scientific discovery.
Stephen Dennison
Daejeon, South Korea
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
RSS