Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

PROFILE: Resilient cultural campaigner pushes for local language studies despite ills

Taipei Times

Union of Education in Taiwan chairperson Cheng Cheng-iok holds a high-school Chinese textbook while speaking at a meeting in Taipei on Feb. 21.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times

Despite having cancer, 68-year-old Union of Education in Taiwan chairperson Cheng Cheng-iok (鄭正煜) said he would continue urging the Ministry of Education to keep mandatory local language courses for the upcoming junior-high school year.

Born in 1946 in Cieding (茄萣) in what is now Greater Kaohsiung, Cheng became a junior-high school teacher after graduating from Chinese Culture University’s history department.

Inappropriate industrial environment

Taipei Times Editorial

The gas pipeline explosions on July 31 and Aug. 1 in Greater Kaohsiung that killed 30 people, injured 310 and left a neighborhood devastated was a tragedy, but a press conference held by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) discussing the disaster was also tragic.

Since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime relocated to Taiwan, economic development has been industry-driven, with the creation of labor-intensive manufacturing zones, the “homes as factories” policy, petrochemical industrial zones, science parks and industrial parks.

Time to focus on people, not profits

Lee Ken-cheng 李根政

Who exactly is responsible for the death and destruction in Greater Kaohsiung following the gas pipeline explosions on July 31 and Aug. 1? At present, all of the evidence points to LCY Chemical Corp, a company with a pretty dire environmental record.

The day after the blasts, as Greater Kaohsiung residents assessed the aftermath of the explosions, another accident occurred in Jiangsu Province, Kunshan, China. The explosion at Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products, a company run by a Taiwanese businessman, resulted in almost 70 deaths.

China is only holding Taiwan back

Gerrit Van Der Wees

On Aug. 4, the Wall Street Journal carried an interesting editorial entitled: “Taiwan leaves itself behind,” in which the paper argued that Taiwan needs to ratify the service trade agreement ith China to avoid being further isolated internationally.

Regrettably, the Journal article suffers from a number of misperceptions and therefore draws the wrong conclusions. It is a false premise that — as the article argues — the road to less reliance on China runs through Beijing.

More Articles...