US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week met with allies in Japan as part of a dialogue aimed at preventing China’s expansion in the South China and East China seas, as well to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, he scrapped his plans to go on to South Korea and Mongolia after it was announced on Oct. 2 that US President Donald Trump had tested positive for the virus, something that helped stir some resentment in the US against China.
Pompeo’s pitch for a united opposition against China makes it clear that the US understands the ever-present danger of communist China’s expansionism, and that there is still time to block its ambitions.
When then-US president Richard Nixon visited China in 1972, it was the first wrong step toward the modern world’s love affair with “red China”; the transmogrified Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now leading a nation that has become the world’s favorite monster.
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) has said that “during its 5,000 years of civilization, China has never had an ‘invasionist’ or expansionist gene in its body,” adding that it is obvious that Westerners do not understand Chinese civilization and culture.
Pompeo has said that there is a new “iron curtain,” and that if the free world does not work to change China, the free world will be changed by China.
In reality, China’s huge foreign spending, massive propaganda and Belt and Road Initiative is an expansionist attempt to grow its global influence.
Already five of the UN’s 15 specialized agencies are headed by a Chinese. Beijing’s ability to control the UN is growing by the day, as it is turns the world body into a “red megaphone” to spread its ideology in an effort to replace the US and redefine the principles of global governance.
In the UN Human Rights Council, it has frequently blocked other countries from speaking up about Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, as the CCP tries to overturn the universal values of democracy and freedom, revealing its evil mindset for all to see.
Even worse, communist China declares that national sovereignty means that a government should be allowed to reject minority views — an attempt to justify the CCP’s brainwashing in the name of internal security and use of “harmony and unity” as an excuse to ban anyone or anything that does not align with its values.
For example, under Hong Kong’s new National Security Law, anyone in the world could contravene the law by voicing their sympathy or support for Hong Kongers’ fight for democracy.
The CCP is basically trying to impose global self-censorship on freedom of expression.
Free and democratic states must realize that Marxism is once again spreading around the world, and that its main driver is the CCP.
Its emperor, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) will ignite a crisis involving all humanity.
However, it can be foreseen that the CCP’s dictatorial tyranny will bring about the collapse of China in the same way that it brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to another period of division.
To confront the CCP’s expansionist ambition to dominate the world, the Democratic Progressive Party government must have the vision, courage and insight to recognize that it must join Pompeo in calling on anti-communist forces to speak up for the places and people that are being threatened and enslaved by communist China.
To do so is both an accusation against a China that has long suppressed and threatened Taiwan with military force and a way for Taiwan to survive.
It is time to turn Taiwan into the anti-communist fortress that Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) wanted, which would also highlight the insignificance of all the boot-licking pro-China entertainers, academics and retired generals — and even the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Chen Ching-kuen is an assistant professor.
Translated by Perry Svensson
China has not been a top-tier issue for much of the second Trump administration. Instead, Trump has focused considerable energy on Ukraine, Israel, Iran, and defending America’s borders. At home, Trump has been busy passing an overhaul to America’s tax system, deporting unlawful immigrants, and targeting his political enemies. More recently, he has been consumed by the fallout of a political scandal involving his past relationship with a disgraced sex offender. When the administration has focused on China, there has not been a consistent throughline in its approach or its public statements. This lack of overarching narrative likely reflects a combination
Father’s Day, as celebrated around the world, has its roots in the early 20th century US. In 1910, the state of Washington marked the world’s first official Father’s Day. Later, in 1972, then-US president Richard Nixon signed a proclamation establishing the third Sunday of June as a national holiday honoring fathers. Many countries have since followed suit, adopting the same date. In Taiwan, the celebration takes a different form — both in timing and meaning. Taiwan’s Father’s Day falls on Aug. 8, a date chosen not for historical events, but for the beauty of language. In Mandarin, “eight eight” is pronounced
US President Donald Trump’s alleged request that Taiwanese President William Lai (賴清德) not stop in New York while traveling to three of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, after his administration also rescheduled a visit to Washington by the minister of national defense, sets an unwise precedent and risks locking the US into a trajectory of either direct conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or capitulation to it over Taiwan. Taiwanese authorities have said that no plans to request a stopover in the US had been submitted to Washington, but Trump shared a direct call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平)
It is difficult to think of an issue that has monopolized political commentary as intensely as the recall movement and the autopsy of the July 26 failures. These commentaries have come from diverse sources within Taiwan and abroad, from local Taiwanese members of the public and academics, foreign academics resident in Taiwan, and overseas Taiwanese working in US universities. There is a lack of consensus that Taiwan’s democracy is either dying in ashes or has become a phoenix rising from the ashes, nurtured into existence by civic groups and rational voters. There are narratives of extreme polarization and an alarming
RSS