Tsai must take climate action
As a consultant for the government and having attended the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings for the past 21 years, I would like to urge President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to take ambitious action on climate change and declare Taiwan’s target for net-zero carbon emissions; more and more leaders are doing so around the world.
Taiwan is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, but also very vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as we are witnessing a water shortage crisis.
Yet Taiwan also has the financial and technological capacity to deal with climate change, and to help others to do so.
As Tsai mentioned in her New Year’s address, we need to transform the challenges of carbon reduction into green investments and business opportunities for sustainable development, but we need leadership from the very top level to make that happen.
Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue, nor a domestic policy issue to be dealt with by laws at legislative and ministerial level. It is now considered an important foreign policy and national security issue worldwide. US President Joe Biden is convening 40 world leaders on Earth Day for a climate summit to step up efforts by the world’s major economies to reduce emissions.
Therefore, I urge President Tsai to take bold climate action now to make Taiwan one of the climate leaders, and not just a bystander.
Robert Shih
General manager at YC Consultants, Ltd
Taichung
Merging Matsu pilgrimages
The annual Dajia Matsu Pilgrimage travels from Taichung’s Jenn Lann Temple to the Fongtian Temple in Yunlin County’s Singang Township in nine days and eight nights, and every year attracts tens of thousands of devotees of the sea goddess. The Baishatun Matsu Pilgrimage leaves the Gongtian Temple in Miaoli County’s Tongsiao Township and returns eight days and seven nights later, having visited the Chaotian Temple in Yunlin County’s Beigang Township, not far from Singang.
These pilgrimages are major annual events in the world of religion in Taiwan.
As both of these events are Matsu pilgrimages, and given that both are held around the same time, following similar routes, it makes sense to combine them into one big event.
It is certainly something the organizers should give some thought to.
They could arrange it so that they leave and arrive at their destinations at slightly different times and maintain their respective traditions and conventions when they arrive at the main temples, but other aspects, such as the route and the places they stop at along the way, could be merged.
By combining the pilgrimages it would be possible to expand the numbers of participants for each of the temples, and enhance the atmosphere and to set a new record for the size of a religious event in Taiwan. At the same time, it would reduce the human resources and logistics required for traffic control and environmental protection, not to say the amount of disruption to the lives of people living along the routes.
Chi An-hsiu
Taipei
Victory in conflict requires mastery of two “balances”: First, the balance of power, and second, the balance of error, or making sure that you do not make the most mistakes, thus helping your enemy’s victory. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made a decisive and potentially fatal error by making an enemy of the Jewish Nation, centered today in the State of Israel but historically one of the great civilizations extending back at least 3,000 years. Mind you, no Israeli leader has ever publicly declared that “China is our enemy,” but on October 28, 2025, self-described Chinese People’s Armed Police (PAP) propaganda
Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian (薛劍) on Saturday last week shared a news article on social media about Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan, adding that “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off.” The previous day in the Japanese House of Representatives, Takaichi said that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute “a situation threatening Japan’s survival,” a reference to a legal legal term introduced in 2015 that allows the prime minister to deploy the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The violent nature of Xue’s comments is notable in that it came from a diplomat,
China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, entered service this week after a commissioning ceremony in China’s Hainan Province on Wednesday last week. Chinese state media reported that the Fujian would be deployed to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and the western Pacific. It seemed that the Taiwan Strait being one of its priorities meant greater military pressure on Taiwan, but it would actually put the Fujian at greater risk of being compromised. If the carrier were to leave its home port of Sanya and sail to the East China Sea or the Yellow Sea, it would have to transit the
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom, sparked by the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, took the world by storm. Within weeks, everyone was talking about it, trying it and had an opinion. It has transformed the way people live, work and think. The trend has only accelerated. The AI snowball continues to roll, growing larger and more influential across nearly every sector. Higher education has not been spared. Universities rushed to embrace this technological wave, eager to demonstrate that they are keeping up with the times. AI literacy is now presented as an essential skill, a key selling point to attract prospective students.
RSS