Small nation standing tall
Taiwan is still very unknown in the world. One reason is its uniqueness. It stands alone, hidden in the shadows of its neighbors. It is small, but still bigger than Hong Kong or Singapore, who somehow manage to be more expensive and more famous, despite their smaller size.
It is between two big countries who are also the second and third-largest economies in the world: China and Japan. It is cheaper living here than the US or Europe, but Vietnam and the Philippines are even cheaper than Taiwan. And [South] Korean pop culture is big now.
Shelley Rigger observes in her book, Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse, that Taipei 101 is a tall building standing alone amid much smaller buildings.
She also says that Taiwan is a kind of reverse analogy: a lesser-known country alone among many countries that are more widely known.
Andres Chang
Taipei
Court corruption overcome
As a foreigner having lived in Taiwan since 1964 and having experienced legal battles at the Taipei court for more than five years, with an average of one court appearance a month, I completely agree with Taiwan Jury Association chairman Chang Ching (張靜).
A bulldozer started digging a ditch on our beach community private land without authorization.
Is there a more simple legal case? You prove the ownership of the land, take pictures of the ditch, ask the bulldozer driver to testify on who hired him and it is the end of the story.
Why did it take so long? I won because the National Security Bureau got involved. With them putting a magnifying glass on the case, the judges were afraid of being shown to be corrupt.
Corruption not only financial, but also political. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) at the time were running the courts, like all of Taiwan.
In my case, political.
The chief of staff of the military was behind the defendant protecting him. An amazing place Taiwan.
Pierre Loisel
New Taipei City
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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