Taiwan heads to the polls next month for local elections. Beneath the campaign ads lies a deeper question: What do we call this place and who gets to decide? In the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), that question has been playing out across three centuries. The entries for “Formosa” and “Taiwan” chart an island’s journey from colonial fantasy to self-named reality. Names are rarely neutral; they are the first act of possession. Nowhere is this more evident than in the OED, where the two entries serve as a linguistic seismograph for one of the world’s most enduring geopolitical fault lines.
There are two space races that the democracies must win: one to deter military campaigns near Earth, and the other to secure positional deterrence on the Moon and beyond. The good news is that the US is engaged in both races, which will also benefit US allies and partners in Asia, including Taiwan. On Sept. 14, US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink disclosed, “...the US now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.” No details about these “space control weapons” have yet been disclosed. However, a graphic apparently issued by French Space Command and posted
Only 107,812 babies were born in Taiwan last year, barely half the number recorded in 2016. The nation is now a super-aged society, with more than one-fifth of its population aged 65 or older. The National Development Council forecast that the population could fall from an estimated 23.2 million this year to just 12.1 million in 2075. The decline in the working-age population would be even more severe. The number of people aged 15 to 64 is projected to plunge from an estimated 15.8 million this year to 5.1 million by 2075, a reduction of about 67 percent. By then, people
Taipei’s school lunch program has run into trouble yet again. This time, Shilin District’s (士林) Shihtung Elementary School (士東國小) was exposed by parents on social media for serving rotten, blackened pears. The incident once again sparked criticism about food safety in Taipei schools and the quality of the city’s free lunch policy. Free school lunches for all elementary and junior-high schools is a flagship policy announced by Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) in January, but at the time it attracted criticism from other administrative regions. Since the policy’s official implementation last month, the city — which has the largest budget
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