The results of Saturday’s local elections reflect mainstream public opinion in Taiwan, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) said. The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) resounding defeat showed that Taiwanese are hoping for peace, stability and a good life, Zhu said, following the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) policy of using Taiwan’s democracy to isolate and damage the DPP, which Beijing regards as a band of “secessionists.” She said the DPP’s pro-US stance and its emphasis on protecting Taiwan’s sovereignty — positions Beijing says have contributed to increased cross-strait tensions — were the reasons for the party’s electoral drubbing.
Unlike general elections, which focus on national matters, local elections are concerned with local issues, such as COVID-19 prevention measures put in place by the DPP-led government, which might have motivated people to vote for the candidates of other parties. The DPP’s defeat is an indication of democratic sophistication and shows that Taiwanese are able to compartmentalize with great clarity. This is why few pundits are suggesting that the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) victory on Saturday necessarily means that it will be plain sailing for the KMT in the 2024 presidential election, when voters once more turn their attention to national security issues.
The first question that arises from Zhu’s comment is why cross-strait peace is threatened in the first place. Who is placing stability across the Taiwan Strait at risk? A governing party focused on protecting the nation should not be a contentious issue in an election at any level.
The second question concerns the alternative she is presumably alluding to: that Taiwan would be better off under CCP control.
Chinese who are taking to the streets over the past few days give a resounding answer to that question. A blaze in Xinjiang’s Urumqi on Thursday last week that killed a number of people that to this day remains undisclosed — because the CCP prefers not to let that information be known — sparked a wave of protests throughout the country against Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “zero COVID-19” policy, as residents of the burning building were reportedly prevented from leaving because the area was under a lockdown order. Originally an expression of outrage over the needless deaths, the protests quickly became an outlet of frustration over months of restrictions that have disrupted people’s lives, led to their businesses failing, led to them being locked up in their apartments for long periods and their loved ones dying due to a lack of access to medicines.
Footage that has found its way out of China shows people calling for freedom and for Xi to step down. As much as the footage has astonished China observers, it must have also alarmed the CCP leadership.
Ask regular Chinese what they think about the “good life” and their own government’s handling of the pandemic, but do not ask Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅), whose silence in response to a Reuters journalist asking for a comment on the protests was deafening. Zhao eventually gave a practiced denial that the protests are happening at all.
Police have broken up the protests and erected barriers to ensure they do not happen again. They have approached pedestrians and searched their smartphones for footage of the protests, and instructed them to delete messaging apps such as Telegram.
China experts and Chinese exiles, such as artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), have said they do not believe the protests will bring down the CCP, as Xi’s grip on power is too strong.
Even if this fire is put out, Xi will know that people’s frustration and anger will continue to smolder. Chinese, too, hope for peace, stability and a good life.
US President Donald Trump last week told reporters that he had signed about 12 letters to US trading partners, which were set to be sent out yesterday, levying unilateral tariff rates of up to 70 percent from Aug. 1. However, Trump did not say which countries the letters would be sent to, nor did he discuss the specific tariff rates, reports said. The news of the tariff letters came as Washington and Hanoi reached a trade deal earlier last week to cut tariffs on Vietnamese exports to the US to 20 percent from 46 percent, making it the first Asian country
Life as we know it will probably not come to an end in Japan this weekend, but what if it does? That is the question consuming a disaster-prone country ahead of a widely spread prediction of disaster that one comic book suggests would occur tomorrow. The Future I Saw, a manga by Ryo Tatsuki about her purported ability to see the future in dreams, was first published in 1999. It would have faded into obscurity, but for the mention of a tsunami and the cover that read “Major disaster in March 2011.” Years later, when the most powerful earthquake ever
As things heated up in the Middle East in early June, some in the Pentagon resisted American involvement in the Israel-Iran war because it would divert American attention and resources from the real challenge: China. This was exactly wrong. Rather, bombing Iran was the best thing that could have happened for America’s Asia policy. When it came to dealing with the Iranian nuclear program, “all options are on the table” had become an American mantra over the past two decades. But the more often US administration officials insisted that military force was in the cards, the less anyone believed it. After
During an impromptu Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally on Tuesday last week to protest what the party called the unfairness of the judicial system, a young TPP supporter said that if Taiwan goes to war, he would “surrender to the [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army [PLA] with unyielding determination.” The rally was held after former Taipei deputy mayor Pong Cheng-sheng’s (彭振聲) wife took her life prior to Pong’s appearance in court to testify in the Core Pacific corruption case involving former Taipei mayor and TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲). The TPP supporter said President William Lai (賴清德) was leading them to die on
RSS