Some people are thick-skinned. They do not care much about what other people think. Such people know that they can get away with saying what they want. They can stand in front of others and spout platitudes about being loyal to the party and a patriot and being up for the fight, but this is little more than Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) propaganda and a carefully crafted policy designed to govern Taiwan through a “divide and conquer” strategy. And it has the gall to say that it has “class” and “standards.”
Unfortunately for the KMT, the nation’s democratization has exposed its lies. The things that it wants the public to believe just no longer ring true and people are starting to question the lies being fed to them.
The KMT wallows in peddling untruths and pulling the wool over the eyes of ordinary people. There have been, over the past few months, three occasions in which presidential or vice presidential candidates’ academic qualifications have been called into question.
First, allegations were made against the KMT’s former presidential candidate, Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), casting doubts on the authenticity of a master’s degree she obtained in the US.
After the party had rescinded Hung’s nomination, KMT vice presidential candidate Jennifer Wang (王如玄) referred to her doctorate in law from the Renmin University of China, a degree that was not recognized by the Ministry of Education.
Then there is KMT presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) himself. Chu apparently received a doctorate in accounting from New York University (NYU) in 1991.
On the Legislative Yuan’s Web site, on the Chinese-language page on educational histories, it says that Chu taught as an assistant professor at NYU between 1990 and 1992, which would seem to indicate that he taught at NYU as an assistant professor before he received his doctorate from that institution. Could this be true?
However, according to Chu’s English-language resume, the university at which he taught as an assistant professor is listed as the City University of New York, not NYU.
On the Legislative Yuan Web site, the word “city” has been removed from the name of the school at which Chu taught, causing people to mistake it for NYU. There really is quite a difference between the two.
The KMT is fond of criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for being too “unsophisticated,” not sufficiently worldly and unable to speak foreign languages.
However, during the current election campaign, KMT legislators Alex Tsai (蔡正元), Chiu Yi (邱毅) and Alicia Wang (王育敏), always out to get DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), have called for her to “open your data.”
Open her data? What does that even mean?
All three words are English, yes, but two of them are being used incorrectly, and all three strung together make absolutely no sense at all.
Here is another interesting English phrase for them to study: Own goal.
Perhaps that “open her data” was just a little joke on their part.
Nevertheless, it is no joke when you deny apologizing for false allegations when you have already submitted both a written and a verbal apology for said allegations in court.
For that is a matter of record, it is a smoking gun, but still those of “proper breeding” say that this is the simply the “orthodox” KMT.
And all that other people can say, with their short-sightedness and their lack of standards, is: “Oh, that is just the way the KMT is.”
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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