Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

In the shadow of the seemingly waning global Pax Americana and a would-be regional Pax Sinica, now acutely complicated by the ongoing North Korean crisis, Japan has recently taken some low-profile yet significant initiatives in its Taiwan policy.

Without careful reading, these initiatives appear mutually unconnected, but they in fact reflect Tokyo’s major strategic recalculation under growing uncertainty in the regional security environment.

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), under which Taiwan was a one-party state for near half a century, is finally in decline — after being routed in the elections it has now been asked to return its ill-gotten party assets, and its cadres who lost power are busy competing for the their piece of the pie.

Old members are revealing the true color of their “bones.” While some are now saying they have “blue [KMT] skin with Taiwanese bones,” an old KMT member who has spent his whole life devoted to fighting the Chinese communists has recently revealed his red (communist) bones, saying that he is no longer anti-communist and vowing to “promote unification” from this point on.