The generation born or raised after the lifting of martial law in 1987 was the first to experience democratization and enjoy the initial fruits of Taiwan’s freedom. Many of the generation following those who witnessed martial law lifted are now high-school and college students. The political background in which they grew up was the second eight-year governance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Taiwan’s democracy has issues that need to be addressed in each generation, but the social environment of this latest voting-age generation is freer and more open. If they take universal values such as democracy, freedom and human rights for granted, then they are testing Taiwan’s democratic resilience and putting these staples at risk.
Politics has become increasingly vulgar, populist and beholden to celebrity worship, and the eyeballs come before the brain. The more often Internet celebrities and politicians grab the attention of people on social media, the more they get to shape this generation’s political ideas and attitudes.
Thus, slogans such as “blue and green are equally bad” and even “taking down the DPP” have become dumbed-down slogans used to criticize politics, making withdrawal of Taiwan’s democratic assets easy, and such dumbing-down is not going to stop until democracy is bankrupted.
If young people, including teenagers are the “democratic trust fund babies” following Taiwan’s democratization, then what we ought to worry about is whether Taiwan’s democracy would be a case of “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” after next month’s presidential and legislative elections.
Faced with the crisis of democracy being gutted or bankrupt, the elections, like a national shareholders’ meeting, would determine how Taiwan’s democracy could sustainably operate.
There is still more than a month left until the elections, and we still have a chance to explain to the younger generation how to invest in Taiwan’s democracy.
Just as there are risks in financial investment and management, in the market of democracy, what kind of candidates and political parties you invest in and whether your voting judgement is correct determines whether the democracy you live in continues to thrive independently or be subordinated and dominated.
Yang Tsung-li is a political staff member.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) recent visit to Beijing and her upcoming visit to Washington will serve as a high-level test of her diplomatic mettle. In Beijing, Cheng was received with symbolic gestures, a warm reception, and high-level access. In Washington, she will receive far less pomp and far sharper questions about the KMT’s vision for the future of Taiwan. Her challenge will be to persuade Washington that the KMT’s engagement with China can coexist with strong deterrence. Cheng’s April 7-12 visit to mainland China coincided with an intense period of conflict in Iran. Despite the strategic significance of Cheng’s trip,
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent the vast Asian chemicals industry into a tailspin. Deprived of the likes of Qatari natural gas and Saudi Arabian oil, the region’s fertilizer and plastics plants are slowing production or even shutting down. Everywhere except China, that is. In petrochemicals, China is unique. As well as a traditional industry that uses oil and gas as feedstock, it has parallel output that relies on its abundant domestic coal. Unsurprisingly, India and other regional powers want to copy and paste the Chinese method. This would not be easy — or climate friendly. The
History might remember 2026, not 2022, as the year artificial intelligence (AI) truly changed everything. ChatGPT’s launch was a product moment. What is happening now is an anthropological moment: AI is no longer merely answering questions. It is now taking initiative and learning from others to get things done, behaving less like software and more like a colleague. The economic consequence is the rise of the one-person company — a structure anticipated in the 2024 book The Choices Amid Great Changes, which I coauthored. The real target of AI is not labor. It is hierarchy. When AI sharply reduces the cost
US President Donald Trump recently repeated his claim that “Taiwan stole America’s chip industry,” reigniting public debate on the issue. As a former Taiwanese minister of economic affairs and an entrepreneur deeply involved in semiconductor supply chain development, I feel a responsibility to clarify this misunderstanding. From the perspective of global industrial evolution and the economic principle of comparative advantage, such a statement appears overly simplistic and risks obscuring the essence of the issue. The rise of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry was not built on “replacing America,” but rather emerged as a result of countries pursuing different development paths within the
RSS