Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Take guard against fake liberalization

Liu Ching-yi 劉靜怡

People voting in an online poll picked the Chinese character jia (假), meaning bogus or fake, as word of the year for last year. Citizen’s Congress Watch (公民監督國會聯盟) picked the same word to typify the events of last year. Over the New Year period, many people have been talking about what the poll result means for the nation.

Over the past year, there have been instances of fakery in many arenas: food safety, environmental pollution, land acquisition, the running of the armed forces, the judicial system, crises of constitutional government and even collaborative projects between business and academia.

Independence beats ‘status quo’ in poll

Taipei Times

The majority of Taiwanese favor independence over unification and identify strongly with the name “Republic of China (ROC),” as well as with the national flag, but are less receptive to the national anthem, a recent public opinion poll conducted by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) showed.

Online news site Newtalk obtained and published the results of the survey — which were not released to the public — on Sunday.

Capitalist scheme hurts the nation

Liao Pen-chuan 廖本全

The nation’s economic development has come at the expense of the government’s prolonged pandering to capitalists. It has given them preferential tax benefits and exemptions as well as inexpensive water and electricity, together with relaxed land-use restrictions. It has handed capitalists the whole country on a platter, which has allowed them to exploit cheap labor, grab land and national parks, destroy the ecology and the environment, pollute crops, endanger health and pass the costs on to the vulnerable and the disadvantaged elements of society and to the public as a whole.

The government has done this to lower production costs and maximize competition through mass production and low unit prices so that Taiwan could become a global manufacturing powerhouse.

Ma’s focus on Xi, not constituency

Taipei Times Editorial

After repeatedly downplaying the possibility of a direct meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while insisting that such a meeting could only take place with the support of the Taiwanese public, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) finally revealed his true intentions in an interview with the Hong Kong-based weekly Yazhou Zhoukan.

Ma was quoted in the interview, released on Wednesday, as saying that although China has ruled out the possibility of a Ma-Xi meeting at next year’s APEC summit, he remains willing to attend the economic summit and meet Xi, adding that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait “need to create the conditions necessary for such a meeting, and we are still in the process of creating these conditions.”

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