Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Why Does Taiwan's Ma Ying-jeou Not Want to End China's Civil War?

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

A frequent joke that comes up in the United States is when those who are from the Southern States are at a party with those who are Northerners and the Southerners claim that the Civil War never ended. It happens when discussions turn regional and political; thus someone will inevitably say, "Save your Confederate dollars my friends, the South will rise again." The joke is accepted by all since it provides a humorous way to avoid the potential tension and hostility that can arise when politics as well as religion are discussed. In Taiwan, however, any such past Civil War jokes linked to China's and not Taiwan's past are not a way of relieving potential tension, but the result of its current president and some others living in a bygone age and not being able to let go of it. Why? This is what Taiwanese need examine as the 2012 elections approach.

Blaauw details the two pillars critical to Taiwan’s future

Taipei Times

Two major pillars — the will of the Taiwanese public and the US’ commitment to its ally — provide support for Taiwan’s future, Formosan Association for Public Affairs executive director Coen Blaauw said earlier this week.

In a keynote speech to the 27th annual convention of the North American Taiwanese Medical Association (NATMA), Blaauw said that while he had no real concerns about the US fulfilling its role, he worried that Taiwanese might not fight hard enough to stay separate from China.

Culture genocide in Tibet is true, says former US diplomat

Tendar Tsering

John Graham

DHARAMSHALA, November 15: John Graham, a former US diplomat, after a ten-day private visit to Tibet, last month, has attested that reports of cultural genocide in Tibet are true.

"For ten days last month I saw first-hand what the Chinese are doing in Tibet … The reports you've heard of cultural genocide are true. China is obliterating the ideas, traditions and habits of the Tibetan people," writes Graham in an article titled ‘Goodbye Tibet?’

‘Ditch Taiwan’ camp hits new low

Taipei Times Editorial

Calls by what remains a small number of voices in the US academic community for Washington to “ditch” Taiwan for the sake of better relations with China reached a new low last week with the publication of an opinion piece in the New York Times by Paul Kane, a former international security fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Earlier this year, a handful of articles were published in journals, including Foreign Affairs, making the case that realist US foreign policy required the abandonment of Taiwan to clear the way for a full relationship with China in difficult economic times. Reactions to those pieces then showed beyond doubt that the arguments advanced by those academics failed on several grounds, including moral.

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