Even as China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was conducting live-fire drills and a simulated blockade in the waters around Taiwan, and despite concerns that his plans would seriously damage the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) prospects in the November local elections, KMT Vice Chairman Andrew Hsia (夏立言) insisted on leading a party delegation to China.
Unable to prevent the trip, KMT politicians were only able to call for the itinerary of the visit to be public and transparent, and urge Hsia to express Taiwanese’s dissatisfaction with the PLA’s exercises.
According to the KMT’s account of what occurred during his meeting with China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), Hsia did object to the exercises.
However, Zhang said that China’s activities were aimed at safeguarding national sovereignty and its territorial integrity, and that it was targeting separatist activities by the Taiwanese independence movement and foreign interference.
Taiwanese remain unconvinced about whether Hsia did make those objections on their behalf, as the KMT’s “account” would have them believe, and Hsia did not press the matter further after Zhang’s lecture.
The PLA subsequently announced that it would conduct another two days of live-fire drills, on Friday and yesterday, off China’s Fujian Province and only 140km from Hsinchu. They were enough to show that Hsia’s objections were a mere formality at best, designed only for the optics they would afford back home.
When it comes to expressing objections, it is a case of “go big or go home.” Former minister of health and welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) showed how things should be done when he led a delegation to the World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in May 2017.
Despite Taiwan not having received a formal letter of invitation, Chen went anyway, to present a letter of protest to the Swiss, expressing Taiwan’s anger at China’s interference in Taiwan’s participation at the WHA. He also held a news conference an hour before the opening of the meeting, protesting the WHA’s failure to invite Taiwan.
If Hsia cannot find anything useful to learn from the way Democratic Progressive Party politicians do things, perhaps he could take a leaf from his own party’s book, and how it protested the government’s decision to lift the ban on US imports of pork containing ractopamine residue. That certainly grabbed people’s attention.
In November 2020, KMT legislators flung pig offal around the legislative chamber and blew whistles and air horns to drown out Premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) question-and-answer session to boycott the government’s policy. The story even made it into the foreign media.
Throwing offal and sounding air horns might have been gilding the lily, but if Hsia had refused to attend the dinner with Zhang, having expressed Taiwan’s objections to the drills, or even staged a mass walkout after Zhang had delivered his little lecture to express his dissatisfaction with the response, there would have been no need for the KMT to offer its own account: Taiwanese and the international community would have been very clear about what the KMT’s position on the PLA’s live-fire exercises was.
Lin Han is a junior-high school teacher.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Speaking at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on May 13, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that democracies must remain united and that “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism.” Earlier that day, Tsai had met with a group of Danish parliamentarians led by Danish Parliament Speaker Pia Kjaersgaard, who has visited Taiwan many times, most recently in November last year, when she met with President William Lai (賴清德) at the Presidential Office. Kjaersgaard had told Lai: “I can assure you that ... you can count on us. You can count on our support
Denmark has consistently defended Greenland in light of US President Donald Trump’s interests and has provided unwavering support to Ukraine during its war with Russia. Denmark can be proud of its clear support for peoples’ democratic right to determine their own future. However, this democratic ideal completely falls apart when it comes to Taiwan — and it raises important questions about Denmark’s commitment to supporting democracies. Taiwan lives under daily military threats from China, which seeks to take over Taiwan, by force if necessary — an annexation that only a very small minority in Taiwan supports. Denmark has given China a
Many local news media over the past week have reported on Internet personality Holger Chen’s (陳之漢) first visit to China between Tuesday last week and yesterday, as remarks he made during a live stream have sparked wide discussions and strong criticism across the Taiwan Strait. Chen, better known as Kuan Chang (館長), is a former gang member turned fitness celebrity and businessman. He is known for his live streams, which are full of foul-mouthed and hypermasculine commentary. He had previously spoken out against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and criticized Taiwanese who “enjoy the freedom in Taiwan, but want China’s money”
Last month, two major diplomatic events unfolded in Southeast Asia that suggested subtle shifts in the region’s strategic landscape. The 46th ASEAN Summit and the inaugural ASEAN-Gulf-Cooperation Council (GCC)-China Trilateral Summit in Kuala Lumpur coincided with French President Emmanuel Macron’s high-profile visits to Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore. Together, they highlighted ASEAN’s maturing global posture, deepening regional integration and China’s intensifying efforts to recalibrate its economic diplomacy amid uncertainties posed by the US. The ASEAN summit took place amid rising protectionist policies from the US, notably sweeping tariffs on goods from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, with duties as high as 49 percent.
RSS