Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Grand justice nominee promises judicial reform

Taipei Times

Remington Huang, one of the nominees for the Council of Grand Justices, yesterday answers legislators’ questions during a review of his qualifications at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times

Grand justice nominee Remington Huang (黃瑞明) yesterday promised to recuse himself from the constitutional interpretation cases filed by his wife, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), and not to seek reappointment when his term ends amid growing public distrust of the judiciary.

The Taiwan-US-Japan alliance

Huang Tien-lin 黃天麟

Pro-China academics and media have warned President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) about the rise of China and urged her to take a pragmatic approach to dealing with this issue to deepen cross-strait relations.

However, what is happening on the global stage is moving in exactly the opposite direction. For more than a year, the international political climate has undergone changes advantageous to Taiwan and conducive to an alliance between Taiwan, Japan and the US. This is true economically and militarily.

A different US approach to Taiwan

James Wang 王景弘

Taiwan is the world’s 17th largest trading nation, with aviation routes that extend to all of the world’s major cities. Still, Taiwan’s participation in this year’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly was crudely vetoed by China.

Beijing appears unconcerned with those cross-border issues that are in the common interest of humanity: improving hygiene and safety, cracking down on criminals and global warming. Instead, China’s leaders are preoccupied with suppressing Taiwan at every possible turn in an attempt to force it to accept Beijing’s stance on sovereignty.

China’s fascination with currency

Barry Eichengreen

At the start of this month, China’s currency, the yuan, was added to the basket of currencies that make up the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, or SDR. Previously, the SDR had been defined as a weighted average of the US dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen. Now that the yuan has been added, it can claim to be one of just five truly global currencies.

Should we care? The Chinese certainly do. In Beijing, where I was late last month, joining the rarefied SDR club was all people wanted to talk about. (OK, truth be told, they also wanted to talk about Donald Trump.)

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