Former minister of health and welfare Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) on Friday last week said that he had lost the last iota of respect he once had for Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) over the government’s banning Chinese children of Taiwanese-Chinese couples over the age of two from returning to Taiwan amid the COVID-19 pandemic unless they have Republic of China passports.
Yaung made the remark during a public hearing on allowing Chinese students and Chinese children of such couples to return to Taiwan.
His words were in the same vein as the accusations former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leveled at President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in February, when Ma said that the ban contravened the spirit of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Citing the convention, Yaung said that the right of a child to live with their parents must be protected regardless of nationality, religion or social status.
Ma’s initial criticism could be regarded as picking low-hanging fruit, as the issue of ensuring the welfare of vulnerable minors who are apparently beholden to the dictates of the state is an emotional one.
This does not mean that there is no validity to Ma or Yaung’s criticisms. However, deciding on who can enter the nation at this stage of the pandemic is a complex process, and requires a clearly defined policy to cover a wide range of individual circumstances.
The government has won plaudits for keeping the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the nation low.
However, this cannot lead to complacency. It is crucial to remember how tenuous the situation is.
One only need look at Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, where cases have spiked, following a lull in infections, during which time the federal government seemed to have won an impressive victory over the virus.
Singapore, too, was forced to reimpose its “circuit-breaker” lockdowns. It had gotten its initial outbreak under control, even before the WHO had declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.
The Singaporean government attempted to control a subsequent outbreak among migrant workers living in densely populated dorms by implementing stringent limits to the workers’ freedom of movement, but the novel coronavirus still spread into the wider community, to devastating effect.
If the government takes its eyes off the ball even for a minute, or makes concessions to certain groups, however morally persuasive the argument for doing so may be, it risks a spike in infections, which might be difficult to get under control.
Numbers in this context are not mere metrics: They equate to lives.
When it comes to the issue of allowing the children of cross-strait marriages into Taiwan, the government seems to be “damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t.”
Whether one feels Tsai and Chen have made the right call depends on where one places the fulcrum between the rights of the group of children in question and the health of the public as a whole. People would only discern their error if it leads to a disaster.
However, Yaung’s reiteration of the rights of the child being unrelated to their nationality — as opposed to that of one parent — does ring true. The reason Chen gave on July 15 for making the age of two the cut-off point was that “there remains a large likelihood that the child will become Taiwanese,” as nationality can still be decided at that point.
These children do not decide whether they will adopt Taiwanese or Chinese nationality. This aspect of the policy seems like punishing the child for the decisions of their parents, based on arbitrary — and political — reasoning. The government should revisit that point.
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) were born under the sign of Gemini. Geminis are known for their intelligence, creativity, adaptability and flexibility. It is unlikely, then, that the trade conflict between the US and China would escalate into a catastrophic collision. It is more probable that both sides would seek a way to de-escalate, paving the way for a Trump-Xi summit that allows the global economy some breathing room. Practically speaking, China and the US have vulnerabilities, and a prolonged trade war would be damaging for both. In the US, the electoral system means that public opinion
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
RSS