Change the anthem
Former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairman Richard Bush on Monday published an open letter on the Web site of Washington-based think tank the Brookings Institution expressing his concern over a proposed plebiscite on Taiwanese independence that is being pushed by the pro-independence group Formosa Alliance.
On Wednesday, the AIT also made a clear statement: “We do not support a referendum on Taiwan independence.”
Taiwan is essentially a sovereign, independent nation, which only lacks an amendment to the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution. As it is difficult to amend the Constitution, the alliance should not make such a huge stride in the first place, but rather turn its focus to changing the national anthem.
In an op-ed article published by the Chinese-language Apple Daily on Jan. 23, 2016, history professor Lee Hsiao-feng (李筱峰), from the National Taipei University of Education’s Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture, called for the drafting of an official ROC national anthem, which would effectively avoid disputes arising from people outside the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) with different stances.
Now that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holds more than half of the legislative seats, if it does not even want to change certain passages of the national anthem, such as “The Three Principles of the People / Is our party’s belief,” how can the public expect it to fulfill its promises of “name rectification and a new constitution.”
To promote gender equality, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau passed a bill to make the country’s national anthem gender neutral by replacing the words “In all thy sons command” with “In all of us command.”
In another instance, Mongolia removed its national anthem’s second verse that praises Lenin, Stalin, Sukhbaatar and Choibalsan. In 2006, the Mongolian parliament further revised the lyrics to commemorate Genghis Khan, and the revised version is sung to the present day.
In comparison, the DPP trumpets transitional justice, but pays no attention to the national anthem being essentially the KMT’s party anthem.
All the nation’s politicians should not talk loudly about “name rectification and a new constitution,” but focus on changing the national anthem, a move that the US might not frown upon.
Chang Hui-ho
New Taipei City
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
RSS