Tseng Sheng-kuang (曾聖光), a former soldier in Taiwan’s Republic of China Armed Forces (ROCAF) who also went by the name of Jonathan Tseng, joined the ranks of the Ukrainian army and was sadly killed last week in fierce fighting against the Russians.
Some commentators have claimed that he fled Taiwan because he was in debt. The truth is he stepped forward because he was worried about the peril facing the world’s democracies, and because of his professional military experience. He is not just a hero of the world’s democracies, but also the kind of person that Taiwan would most need in the event of a war.
Going to Ukraine to take up arms was a very risky thing to do. Faced with the threat of battle, anyone would think twice before going.
However, Tseng’s gallantry lies in that seeing how Ukraine was being bullied, he could not allow himself, with his military background and ability, to not help Ukraine resist its powerful adversary.
It had nothing to do with his ethnic background or financial situation. Rather, it is the idea that a threat to any democratic country is also a threat to Taiwan.
During China’s war of resistance against Japan, almost 100 former members of the US armed forces volunteered to go to China to join the fight. No one would say that members of the American Volunteer Group, nicknamed the “Flying Tigers,” left the US for financial reasons, or because they had done something wrong. People praise them for their willingness to leave their homeland, where there was no war, to help a disadvantaged country that lacked a fully-fledged air force. The spirit of the Flying Tigers is a fine example of the US military.
Volunteering to fight in Ukraine is far nobler than the behavior of certain retired ROCAF generals who undermine military morale by fraternizing with China’s People’s Liberation Army, or spread the idea that Taiwan’s armed forces are “useless.”
Since Taiwan became democratic, there has remained the question of what the military is supposed to fight for.
However, by volunteering to serve in Ukraine’s army as a retired ROCAF soldier, Tseng showed the international community that Taiwan’s armed forces are willing and able to fight. By creating greater confidence in Taiwan’s national defense, this can only be a good thing for Taiwan’s security.
China’s threats against Taiwan are making people very nervous, but as more of Taiwan’s allies in the US and Japan emphasize that Taiwan’s security is closely linked to their own, Taiwanese should be more confident that the nation can overcome the fear of war.
The right way to win more friends is to lend a helping hand when others are in trouble.
When Ukrainian Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Oleksandr Merezhko paid his respects to Tseng’s family, he was paying tribute to Tseng, but also to Taiwan for its willingness to help Ukraine.
Taiwan should pay tribute to Tseng’s brave soul. If the nation runs into trouble, it would be glad to see people like him coming from all over the world to fight for peace and democracy.
Michael Lin holds a master’s degree from National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of National Development.
Translated by Julian Clegg
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” (attributed to Mark Twain). The USSR was the international bully during the Cold War as it sought to make the world safe for Soviet-style Communism. China is now the global bully as it applies economic power and invests in Mao’s (毛澤東) magic weapons (the People’s Liberation Army [PLA], the United Front Work Department, and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]) to achieve world domination. Freedom-loving countries must respond to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially in the Indo-Pacific (IP), as resolutely as they did against the USSR. In 1954, the US and its allies
A response to my article (“Invite ‘will-bes,’ not has-beens,” Aug. 12, page 8) mischaracterizes my arguments, as well as a speech by former British prime minister Boris Johnson at the Ketagalan Forum in Taipei early last month. Tseng Yueh-ying (曾月英) in the response (“A misreading of Johnson’s speech,” Aug. 24, page 8) does not dispute that Johnson referred repeatedly to Taiwan as “a segment of the Chinese population,” but asserts that the phrase challenged Beijing by questioning whether parts of “the Chinese population” could be “differently Chinese.” This is essentially a confirmation of Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formulation, which says that
On Monday last week, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene met with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers to discuss Taiwan-US defense cooperation, on the heels of a separate meeting the previous week with Minister of National Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄). Departing from the usual convention of not advertising interactions with senior national security officials, the AIT posted photos of both meetings on Facebook, seemingly putting the ruling and opposition parties on public notice to obtain bipartisan support for Taiwan’s defense budget and other initiatives. Over the past year, increasing Taiwan’s defense budget has been a sore spot
Media said that several pan-blue figures — among them former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), former KMT legislator Lee De-wei (李德維), former KMT Central Committee member Vincent Hsu (徐正文), New Party Chairman Wu Cheng-tien (吳成典), former New Party legislator Chou chuan (周荃) and New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) — yesterday attended the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. China’s Xinhua news agency reported that foreign leaders were present alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim
RSS