Let Taiwanese be happy
If Taiwanese are happy, leave them alone and let them be happy (“Happy index not a true reflection,” Sept. 2, page 8).
It does not seem possible, economically or politically, that Taiwanese are happier than Japanese and South Koreans. One thing for sure, and pertinent, is that Taiwanese are happier than Chinese.
A good, smart government always tries its best to make its people happy. Unfortunately, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has done many things against the public’s will.
Here are some examples: The so-called “one China” policy is trying to convert Taiwanese into Chinese; the service trade agreement with China will allow Chinese to take over local jobs; the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has many illegal party assets to fund elections; corruption cases are treated differently according to political affiliation; the government acts like an enemy, infringing on property and human rights; the electromagnetic wave irradiation of farmlands is a health hazard for farmers; and finally, Ma seldom keeps his campaign promises and has failed to make Taiwan a “normal” country.
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
Fighting for citizenship
Article 15 (1) of the Universal Human Rights Declaration says everyone has the right to a nationality. What is the nationality of people from Taiwan?
A Taiwanese student at Oslo University, Lu Yu-ta (呂昱達), ached at being registered as a citizen of the People’s Republic of China. His complaints were ignored by the Norwegian police and immigration authorities.
Lu became frustrated and said: “Although we are granted visa-free access to 140 countries, it is sad that we must suffer through not being recognized as citizens of an independent country.”
Lu has issued a wake-up call for all Taiwanese to face their citizenship.
Citizenship awareness is closely tied to the nation’s future. What does the younger generation dream of? Everyone, like Lu, dreams of being a citizen of a nation called Taiwan with the pride of UN membership. Unfortunately, people have been under the KMT’s brainwashing program for 68 years, which says the Republic of China (ROC) is an independent sovereign state and Taiwan is a province of its territory. The reality is that the ROC is not an independent country, but an exiled government without international recognition.
In the e-generation, people can easily verify historical records. There is no international treaty or legal document declaring that sovereignty over Taiwan has been transferred from Japan to the ROC. President Ma said Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) did ask for Taiwan’s sovereignty in the Cairo declaration and under the Taipei treaty, Japan transfered Taiwan sovereignty to the ROC in 1952.
However, the Cairo declaration was only a news release. Japan renounced all rights, titles and claims to Formosa and the Pescadores on Sept. 8, 1951 in the San Francisco Peace Treaty.
The US military government was named as the principal occupying power. There was no resolution passed by the ROC’s National Assembly or the Legislative Yuan to record Taiwan as annexed territory. There is no proof that the ROC has sovereignty over Taiwan. It is no wonder the international community refer to the ROC as Chinese Taipei; the Chinese exiled government in Taipei.
Why is the nation referred to as Chinese Taipei and not Formosa or Taiwan? That is the puzzle the younger generation needs to solve. They have been educated as Chinese, but the real world tells them they are Formosan.
Sixty-two years ago, on Sept. 5, 1951, three days before the signing of the San Francisco treaty, then-US secretary of state John Foster Dulles said “the foundation for this peace was laid by the many who gave up their lives in faith that the very magnitude of their sacrifice would compel those who survived to find and take the way to peace.”
World War II is over everywhere except in Taiwan. Taiwanese are entitled to self-determination. Hopefully, activist group Citizen 1985 will continue to declare “injustice,” “anger” and “we want truth” to help Lu fight for his nationality claim and to finally define Taiwan’s status.
John Hsieh
Hayward, California
Ideas matter. They especially matter in world affairs. And in communist countries, it is communist ideas, not supreme leaders’ personality traits, that matter most. That is the reality in the People’s Republic of China. All Chinese communist leaders — from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) through Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), from Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) through to Xi Jinping (習近平) — have always held two key ideas to be sacred and self-evident: first, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infallible, and second, that the Marxist-Leninist socialist system of governance is superior to every alternative. The ideological consistency by all CCP leaders,
The US on Friday hosted the second Global COVID-19 Summit, with at least 98 countries, including Taiwan, and regional alliances such as the G7, the G20, the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) attending. Washington is also leading a proposal to revise one of the most important documents in global health security — the International Health Regulations (IHR) — which are to be discussed during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) that starts on Sunday. These two actions highlight the US’ strategic move to dominate the global health agenda and return to the core of governance, with the WHA
Just as the cause of the Kursk submarine disaster remains shrouded in mystery — the nuclear-powered Russian submarine suffered an explosion during a naval exercise on Aug. 12, 2000, and sank, killing all 118 crew onboard — it is unlikely that we will ever get to the bottom of the sequence of events last month that led to the sinking of the Moskva guided missile cruiser, the flagship of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. Ukraine claims it struck the vessel with two missiles, while Russia says ammunition onboard the ship exploded and the ship tipped over while being towed
The war in Ukraine continues, and lines are slowly being drawn in the sand. Nations have begun imposing sanctions; few can ignore the reality of Russia’s aggression and atrocities, especially as it edges to the possibility of making a full declaration of war. For Taiwan, this resurrects a different reality, the tangled web of its own complex past and how as a colony of Japan, it became involved with Russia, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Some role reversals are immediately evident. Taiwan is now an independent nation and the CCP rules China. The CCP indirectly
RSS