Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) this week came under fire over his speech at a Rotary Club meeting in Taipei on Monday, when he said that Beijing’s military strategy toward Taiwan was “to let the first battle be the last.” If China started a cross-strait war, it would end quickly, without time for other nations to react, he said in his “Cross-Strait Relations and Taiwan Security” address, criticizing President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) for saying that she hoped other nations would come to Taiwan’s aid in Beijing’s first wave of attacks.
A president should prevent war from happening, not talk about how many days a nation could last, Ma said.
Taiwan Republic Office members and other independence advocates on Wednesday protested in front of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) headquarters in Taipei, accusing Ma of contravening national security laws, undermining the military’s confidence and selling out Taiwan. They also called on the KMT to expel him. The protest was a nice piece of political theater, but was there anything new in what Ma said — or the remote possibility that the KMT would consider giving him the boot?
Ma and the KMT have long been out of touch with mainstream Taiwanese opinion. He says a president should prevent war from happening, but Taiwanese repudiated his — and his party’s — willingness to sell this nation out without a fight, in his eagerness to wrap the nation’s economy so tightly in China’s tentacles that it would have eventually been smothered.
The spectacular backfiring of the KMT’s efforts to ram Ma’s Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement with Beijing through the legislature in 2014 triggered the Sunflower movement and paved the way for the party’s massive losses in the 2016 elections.
The problem is twofold: One, Ma and the KMT are unable to accept reality or that time and history have passed them by, and two, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cannot accept a disparity of viewpoints, not to mention its allergy to democracy in even a limited form.
Ma, the KMT and the CCP have been trying to brainwash Taiwanese and the world about the meetings and talks they held in the 1990s and ever since, from the spurious so-called “1992 consensus” to all those cross-strait negotiations under Ma’s administration, as well as his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore on Nov. 7, 2015.
The KMT and the CCP continue to blindly parrot the myths of unification and of a great “one China,” despite the rising numbers of people killed or imprisoned by Beijing for seeking to uphold the rights to freedom of religion, language and culture guaranteed under the Chinese constitution, and Beijing running roughshod over Hong Kong.
Ma hoped that his Singapore meeting with Xi, the first between the heads of the KMT and the CCP since the end of the Chinese Civil War, would be enough to win him a place in history, but he is doomed to remain a footnote, unlike former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) or Tsai.
On Oct. 5 last year, Ma was scathing in his critique of Tsai’s first term in office, accusing her of relying too much on the US, pointing to the lack of high-level US official visits and the loss of seven diplomatic allies. He alluded to his oft-heard complaint that she is turning Taiwan into a bargaining chip between the US and China.
The truth — however unpalatable it might be to Ma and the KMT — is that Taiwan has been a bargaining chip since 1949, if not the end of World War II. The loss of diplomatic allies is part of Beijing’s long-running campaign to destroy Taiwan, regardless of who is president. Washington’s willingness to send Cabinet officials for a visit, or sell arms and equipment, has more to do with US domestic politics and foreign policy considerations than Taiwanese politics.
Ma should have his eyesight and hearing checked.
Yesterday’s recall and referendum votes garnered mixed results for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). All seven of the KMT lawmakers up for a recall survived the vote, and by a convincing margin of, on average, 35 percent agreeing versus 65 percent disagreeing. However, the referendum sponsored by the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on restarting the operation of the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County failed. Despite three times more “yes” votes than “no,” voter turnout fell short of the threshold. The nation needs energy stability, especially with the complex international security situation and significant challenges regarding
Most countries are commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with condemnations of militarism and imperialism, and commemoration of the global catastrophe wrought by the war. On the other hand, China is to hold a military parade. According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, Beijing is conducting the military parade in Tiananmen Square on Sept. 3 to “mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.” However, during World War II, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had not yet been established. It
A recent critique of former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s speech in Taiwan (“Invite ‘will-bes,’ not has-beens,” by Sasha B. Chhabra, Aug. 12, page 8) seriously misinterpreted his remarks, twisting them to fit a preconceived narrative. As a Taiwanese who witnessed his political rise and fall firsthand while living in the UK and was present for his speech in Taipei, I have a unique vantage point from which to say I think the critiques of his visit deliberately misinterpreted his words. By dwelling on his personal controversies, they obscured the real substance of his message. A clarification is needed to
There is an old saying that if there is blood in the water, the sharks will come. In Taiwan’s case, that shark is China, circling, waiting for any sign of weakness to strike. Many thought the failed recall effort was that blood in the water, a signal for Beijing to press harder, but Taiwan’s democracy has just proven that China is mistaken. The recent recall campaign against 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, many with openly pro-Beijing leanings, failed at the ballot box. While the challenge targeted opposition lawmakers rather than President William Lai (賴清德) himself, it became an indirect
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