I was watching the TV news over supper a few days ago when I saw Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members marching in a demonstration, holding a banner that proclaimed: “Oppose the party state.” The sight of such a slogan from the KMT made me burst out laughing and spray rice all over the table.
To see this political organization, which for so long did not distinguish between party and state or between the national treasury and its own coffers, now wanting to “oppose the party state” was as absurd as seeing brothelkeepers opposing the sex trade or die-hard gamblers saying “no” to betting.
Does the KMT really “oppose the party state”? If so, then why does it resist when the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee tells it to give the “party assets” that it embezzled from the state back to the national treasury?
If the KMT really “opposes the party state,” then it should also answer the following questions:
Can we please stop using the KMT party anthem as a “national anthem” and designate a real national anthem in its place?
Can we replace the “national emblem,” which is really an extension of the KMT’s party emblem, with a new one, to avoid confusion between the two nearly identical symbols?
Can we take the KMT’s “blue sky and white sun” party flag out of the “blue sky, white sun and red earth” “national flag” and replace it with a national flag that does not fail to distinguish between party and state?
Could we stop singing about “the army established at Whampoa” in the army anthem?
The army that was established at Whampoa [Huangpu District (黃埔) of Guangzhou in China’s Guangdong Province] was the KMT’s army, not a national army.
As for the navy anthem’s call to “win glory for the blue sky and white sun flag,” can that be changed, too, given that the blue sky and white sun flag is the KMT party flag?
The navy is paid for out of the national budget, so what should it strive to win glory for — the nation or the KMT?
Could we also change the wording of the Anthem of the Whampoa Military Academy (黃埔軍校校歌), which still serves as the anthem of the Republic of China Military Academy in Kaohsiung’s Fengshan District (鳳山), which proclaims: “The party flag flying high, this is revolutionary Whampoa”?
Why should the anthem of the national military academy, which is paid for out of the national budget — not that of the KMT — be full of praise for “the party flag flying high”?
If the KMT has really come round to “opposing the party state,” as it claims, how can it tolerate such lyrics in the academy’s anthem?
If the KMT’s replies to any or all of the above questions are in the negative, then it should stop claiming to “oppose the party state,” because it is nothing but a fraud.
Lee Hsiao-feng is an honorary professor of National Taipei University of Education.
Translated by Julian Clegg
After more than a year of review, the National Security Bureau on Monday said it has completed a sweeping declassification of political archives from the Martial Law period, transferring the full collection to the National Archives Administration under the National Development Council. The move marks another significant step in Taiwan’s long journey toward transitional justice. The newly opened files span the architecture of authoritarian control: internal security and loyalty investigations, intelligence and counterintelligence operations, exit and entry controls, overseas surveillance of Taiwan independence activists, and case materials related to sedition and rebellion charges. For academics of Taiwan’s White Terror era —
On Feb. 7, the New York Times ran a column by Nicholas Kristof (“What if the valedictorians were America’s cool kids?”) that blindly and lavishly praised education in Taiwan and in Asia more broadly. We are used to this kind of Orientalist admiration for what is, at the end of the day, paradoxically very Anglo-centered. They could have praised Europeans for valuing education, too, but one rarely sees an American praising Europe, right? It immediately made me think of something I have observed. If Taiwanese education looks so wonderful through the eyes of the archetypal expat, gazing from an ivory tower, how
China has apparently emerged as one of the clearest and most predictable beneficiaries of US President Donald Trump’s “America First” and “Make America Great Again” approach. Many countries are scrambling to defend their interests and reputation regarding an increasingly unpredictable and self-seeking US. There is a growing consensus among foreign policy pundits that the world has already entered the beginning of the end of Pax Americana, the US-led international order. Consequently, a number of countries are reversing their foreign policy preferences. The result has been an accelerating turn toward China as an alternative economic partner, with Beijing hosting Western leaders, albeit
After 37 US lawmakers wrote to express concern over legislators’ stalling of critical budgets, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) pledged to make the Executive Yuan’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget a top priority for legislative review. On Tuesday, it was finally listed on the legislator’s plenary agenda for Friday next week. The special defense budget was proposed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration in November last year to enhance the nation’s defense capabilities against external threats from China. However, the legislature, dominated by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), repeatedly blocked its review. The
RSS