Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday accused leaders of the main opposition parties of tainting Taiwan’s international image and undermining Taiwan-US ties by airing erroneous messages to the world about events in Afghanistan.
Comparisons of the Afghan government’s military defeat to China’s planned annexation of Taiwan have mainly come from top officials in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as candidates campaign for the party’s chairperson election next month, said DPP Legislator Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳), director of the DPP caucus.
“For the sake of scoring political points for their candidate in the party’s chairperson race, KMT officials are willing to sacrifice Taiwan’s national interests by trying to draw parallels between Taiwan and Afghanistan,” Liu told a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
Screen grab by Chien Hui-ju, Taipei Times
After Taliban fighters entered Kabul on Sunday, taking control of the Afghan capital, former KMT and New Party legislator Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) wrote on social media: “Events in Afghanistan could likely happen in Taiwan,” and “It’s foolish for the DPP government to tell Taiwanese that the US will come to save us [from China].”
The US sacrificed the Afghan government by negotiating for peace and withdrawing its troops, said Jaw, who is chairman of Broadcasting Corp of China.
“The US is not a dependable ally,” he wrote. “Taiwan must choose between peace and war, if it does not want to become another Afghanistan.”
“It is wrong to get so close to the US,” Jaw added. “People do not know the grave danger that will befall Taiwan soon.”
KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) told reporters: “We are quite familiar with scenes of the US withdrawing its troops... In the 1970s, the US shifted to play the China card to contain the Soviet Union, so the US military left Taiwan. It led to much anger here, with feelings of uncertainty and apprehension regarding Taiwan’s future.”
On Tuesday, former KMT chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), who is making a second run for the position, posted: “Of course I don’t want Taiwan to become an Afghanistan, and Taiwan must depend on itself, and not rely on any other country.”
Responding to comments that the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan resembles the KMT’s retreat to Taiwan in 1949, Chu wrote: “If the KMT did not do so in 1949, then we would not have the Taiwan of today.”
Separately on Tuesday, KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Wang Hong-wei (王鴻薇) wrote that history has repeated itself with the US’ frantic evacuation from Kabul just as it fled from the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon in April 1975.
“After 20 years, the US just wipes its ass and walks away,” Wang wrote. “It left chaos and the Afghan people in a very dire situation... This is not the first time that the US has abandoned an ally.”
Wang accused the US of only paying lip service to “liberty, freedom and human rights.”
Yesterday, DPP legislative caucus secretary-general Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said: “These KMT comments have been quoted around the international community, even giving the world the erroneous impression that these are mainstream views in Taiwan.”
Lo said that the KMT “failed to explain that the Taiwan of today is very different from the one-party authoritarian regime of the past.”
UNDER WATCH: Taiwan will have to establish a standardized nucleic acid testing method to identify the virus and monitor its spread, the CDC said The Langya henipavirus, which can be transmitted from animals to humans, has been discovered in China, with 35 human infections reported so far, Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said, adding that the nation would establish a nucleic acid testing method to identify the virus. A study titled “A Zoonotic Henipavirus in Febrile Patients in China” that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday said that a new henipavirus associated with a fever-causing human illness was identified in China. The study said an investigation identified 35 patients with acute infection of the Langya henipavirus in China’s Shandong
MISSILE PATHS: Certain information on the Chinese missile fire was not disclosed to maintain secrecy over military intelligence-gathering capabilities, the MND said Military experts yesterday speculated on the implication of the government’s tight-lipped response and the lack of air-raid sirens during the first day of China’s military drills the previous day. On Thursday, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched 11 Dongfeng-series ballistic missiles into waters north, east and south of Taiwan, a day after US House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s departure from the country, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. The Japanese Ministry of Defense said that China fired nine missiles toward Taiwan, including four that flew over Taiwan proper. However, China’s exhibition of force failed to terrorize the local populace, because
If any war were to break out between the US and China, one trigger might be the increasingly frequent fighter jet encounters near Taiwan. Almost every day, Taiwanese fighter pilots hop in their US-made F-16s to intercept Chinese warplanes screaming past their territory. The encounters probe the nation’s defenses and force the pilots on both sides to avoid mistakes that could lead to a crisis that spins out of control. “I didn’t know whether they would fire at me,” said retired colonel Mountain Wang, recounting a tense five-minute confrontation he had with Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) jets more than a decade
INCREASINGLY EMBOLDENED: China can no longer be dismissed as inexperienced, demonstrating an ability to coordinate land and sea missile systems, an expert said Beijing’s largest-ever exercises around Taiwan have offered essential clues into its plans for a grueling blockade in the event of an attack on Taiwan, and revealed an increasingly emboldened Chinese military, experts said. The visit to Taiwan by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi — second in line to the presidency — sparked outrage from Beijing, which launched vast military maneuvers around the nation, even at the risk of partially exposing its plans to the US and its Asian allies. Mobilizing fighter planes, helicopters and warships, the drills aim to simulate a blockade of Taiwan and include practicing an “attack on
RSS