Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

EU assertive, not united on China

Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy

How China interacts with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine would “be a determining factor for EU-China relations going forward,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech on the state of EU-China relations on March 30 in Brussels. Days later, she asserted the same message in Beijing, on a visit she chose to undertake with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The joint visit was meant to project European unity in Beijing, demonstrate that EU member states are converging toward a common position and signal that trying to exploit internal divisions might no longer pay off.

China simulates ‘sealing off’ Taiwan

Taipei Times

China yesterday simulated “sealing off” Taiwan during a third day of war games around the nation, while the US deployed a naval destroyer into the South China Sea in a show of force.

China launched the exercises on Saturday in response to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) meeting with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week, an encounter it had said would provoke a furious response.

Miles Yu On Taiwan: Why is China so obsessed with Taiwan?

Miles Yu

As Russia’s war on Ukraine grinds on into its second year, it continues to generate headlines as the largest land war in Europe since 1945. Yet 5,000 miles away, at the opposite end of the Eurasian land mass, a different conflict lies poised to ignite, kindled by another large country’s distortion of a shared cultural and ethnolinguistic heritage to threaten a smaller neighbor’s sovereignty.

Many headlines have also been written on the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to isolate and strangle the small but defiant democracy on the island of Taiwan. Yet many of these analyses fail to locate the sources of China’s obsession with its neighbor to the southeast. Any effort to neutralize Chinese aggression must begin with one question: why is China so obsessed with subduing a tiny nation of only 23 million people? Examining this question reveals four key motivators animating Beijing’s mania.

Seoul does transitional justice right

Chang Kuo-tsai 張國財

On May 18, 1980, students in Gwangju, South Korea, rallied against martial law. The Gwangju Uprising was soon suppressed, as then-South Korean general Chun Doo-hwan sent in troops to crush the protests. Consequently, 154 people were killed, 70 people disappeared and 3,028 were injured.

Fortunately, thanks to photographs taken by German reporter Jurgen Hinzpeter, the world learned the truth. After Chun became South Korean president later that year, the uprising was defined as a rebellion instigated by communists and their sympathizers.

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