June 21 marked the 10th anniversary of the attempt to push the cross-strait services trade agreement through the legislature.
Ten years ago, under then-president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) pro-China administration, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) tried to sign the Faustian deal without consultation, an undemocratic move that ignited anger among students and others that turned into the Sunflower movement.
As a political star born out of the movement, former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), founder and chairman of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and its presidential candidate, has the audacity to propose in a policy white paper that if elected president, he would restart talks on the services trade deal with China, and even an arrangement for trade in goods.
Ironically, while Ko was discussing social movements during a visit to Japan this month, he cited the Sunflower movement as an example, using it to encourage young people to “just do it” to become pioneers of social activism.
Why the U-turn?
It is clear that Ko is chasing his own political interests. New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, is facing a major slump in the polls over his response to allegations that kindergarten students had been drugged and criticism that he is a “cut and run” candidate — ie, campaigning for the presidency while still serving as mayor. Ko is using Hou’s woes to snatch support from the pan-blue camp.
For Ko to be elected, he has to rely on strategic voting by people who do not back the Democratic Progressive Party. Ko wants them to ditch Hou and vote for him, but his policy backtracking and betrayal of the Sunflower movement has exposed him as capricious, fickle and opportunistic.
In the white paper, Ko said that Taiwan should maintain “equidistant” relations with China and the US.
However, signing a cross-strait services and goods trade agreement would tilt Taiwan toward China economically and politically, and forfeit its sovereignty.
How could a pro-China treaty gel with Ko’s pursuit of “equidistant relations”?
Perhaps Ko is trying to follow in Ma’s footsteps, while forgetting that Ma’s approval rating at one point was as low as 9.2 percent.
When Bonnie Glaser, an expert on China, said that Beijing would be “more comfortable” supporting Ko than Hou, she must have hit a nerve, as Ko seemed compelled to twist her words and meaning.
Taiwanese must ask themselves before they vote whether Taiwan can afford to have a pro-China president in power and watch as he damages Taiwan’s democracy, economy and sovereignty.
More importantly, given Taiwan’s precarious situation, would it be able to of survive a “second Ma presidency” and the catastrophic consequences of pro-China policies?
Lai Yen-cheng is a doctoral candidate at National Yangming Chiao Tung University and a member of the university’s Gender Equity Education Committee.
Translated by Rita Wang
With each passing day, the threat of a People’s Republic of China (PRC) assault on Taiwan grows. Whatever one’s view about the history, there is essentially no question that a PRC conquest of Taiwan would mark the end of the autonomy and freedom enjoyed by the island’s 23 million people. Simply put, the PRC threat to Taiwan is genuinely existential for a free, democratic and autonomous Taiwan. Yet one might not know it from looking at Taiwan. For an island facing a threat so acute, lethal and imminent, Taiwan is showing an alarming lack of urgency in dramatically strengthening its defenses.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
As Taiwan’s only national university research institute focused on indigenous cultures, it is incredibly regrettable that students from National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) have continued the horrible history of Taichung Municipal Taichung First Senior High School and National Taiwan University by expressing harmful, discriminatory views and writing defamatory statements against an indigenous university department. Hiding behind anonymous usernames, people have written online about indigenous students from the NDHU College of Indigenous Studies being allowed to light fires in a farmhouse next to the school’s experimental millet fields. The posters bemoan how students in other programs are somehow not permitted to light