Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The continuing saga of Ann Kao

Taipei Times Editorial

Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) has been under the political spotlight this week as new allegations of ethical misconduct continued to surface.

During her election campaign last year, Kao, a former Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislator-at-large, was accused of receiving paid leave from the Institute for Information Industry (III) while studying abroad and partly plagiarizing published III-funded studies she coauthored into her doctoral dissertation.

Kao’s legislative assistants also accused her of payroll fraud by forcing them to “donate” part of their salaries and overtime pay to a common fund, which was allegedly later used by Kao. She was indicted last month on charges of misusing public funds and making public officials write false entries in public documents.

How to keep Taiwan online in war

Jason Hsu and Richard Y.K. Chen

Internet connectivity is a lifeline — albeit a fragile one — for Taiwan. A recent war game staged in Taipei with experts from the military, tech industries, academia and government suggested that, in the event of a Chinese blockade, the island would be particularly vulnerable to a communications cutoff.

The threat to Taiwan’s digital infrastructure was made plain in February, when Chinese maritime vessels severed two submarine cables connecting the Taiwan to Matsu, a tiny archipelago that belongs to Taiwan but is located just off China’s coast. The months-long outage deprived residents of Internet access and left Matsu, which houses a strategic military base, open to attacks. The damaged cables also exposed the vulnerability of the US tech giant Google, which has a data center on Taiwan’s western coast.

UN deputy chief says exclusion harmful

Taipei Times

Exclusion of anyone harms efforts to achieve global development goals, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said on Friday when asked about Taiwan’s bid for UN participation.

World leaders are to meet next week at the annual high-level UN General Assembly, but Taiwan is excluded under a 1971 UN resolution that recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate representative of China to the UN.

Leaders are also to attend a summit on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals — a global “to-do” list created in 2015 that includes issues such as tackling the climate crisis, achieving gender equality and ending hunger and poverty.

A Taiwanese indigenous ‘voice’

Guy Charlton, Avi Charlton and Jennifer Min

Australia and Taiwan both have ongoing challenges relating to historical reconciliation and justice. Moreover, any of the issues confronting indigenous communities such as lack of policy inputs, discrimination and self-determination are similar. More importantly and practically, a “Taiwanese indigenous voice” would provide a symbolic and practical mechanism where indigenous peoples can have a say over important policy and legal decisions that affect them without needing to resolve or preclude the recognition of indigenous sovereignty which continues to be debated.

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