Opposition parties in the legislature often criticize the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), calling it a “US pawn.”
Great powers are flexing their muscles, with democracies and resurgent communist states heading toward a collision. Minor countries and powers including Taiwan would have to choose a path for survival. The question is, should Taiwan put its lot in with one camp or the other, or should it attempt to strike out on its own?
If great powers did not have dreams of domination or territorial ambitions over their neighbors, smaller countries could live without fear. Taiwan would not need to accept US domination, or China’s.
If becoming the pawn of a great power is the inescapable destiny of small countries, then Taiwanese should ask themselves: Should we become a US or Chinese pawn?
Becoming a pawn of a great power is a matter of choosing the system of governance or way of life one wants to live under. Should Taiwanese choose democracy, freedom and human rights, or communism, authoritarianism and dictatorship?
Some political parties and figures in Taiwan have long chided and blamed Taiwan for China’s “gray zone” tactics when it sends its military aircraft and vessels around Taiwan, cautioning against “provoking China,” and pushing the narrative that “we are the descendants of the Yan and Yellow emperors,” that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family,” that “the first battle would be the last” and that “the US would not deploy troops on Taiwan’s behalf.”
Such discourse is part of a messaging attempt to pass off those parties’ interpretation to the international community that Taiwan needs to choose to be a Chinese pawn. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party feel certain that a democratic US would not intervene on Taiwan’s behalf. They would rather give the US the cold shoulder while accepting tacit orders from Beijing, placing it on a pedestal while ignoring all the actions that would undeniably make the nation China’s pawn.
They would do this while claiming a moral high ground, pretending to keep both great powers at a distance. Yet their track records reveal that doing so is self-deception, and that they are just saying aloud what they wish they could, but lack the gumption to do.
An irony in all this would be to ask which great power these opposition party elites primarily choose for their and their children’s international education. Is it the US or China? When they consider emigrating, do they opt to move to the US and pledge their loyalty to the Stars and Stripes or China’s five yellow stars and crimson field?
These parties, with a self-applied or perhaps passively placed “love China, doubt the US” label, field presidential candidates who are compelled to pay homage to the US prior to elections, with some candidates taking multiple trips to rub shoulders with US officials. None of their candidates seemed willing to do the same with China, perhaps because it would lead to defeat. When they talk about the US, their mouths say “no,” but their heads nod “yes.”
If Taiwan did not need to be a great power pawn, would Taiwanese who cherish democracy, freedom and human rights elect to come under the wing of the leader of democracies? Not much thought has to go in to realize the drawbacks Taiwanese would suffer under an iron-fisted China.
If Taiwan is forced to be a great-power pawn and chose a communist, authoritarian and dictatorial China, would it not be getting what it deserves and sowing its own demise?
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired National Hsinchu University of Education associate professor.
Translated by Tim Smith
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS