Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Tsai unveils DPP’s policy guidelines

Taipei Times

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday officially unveiled her party’s 10-year policy guidelines, saying they represented “a commitment to Taiwan’s next generation” and illustrated the contrast between the DPP’s values and those of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

In one of her most important speeches, the DPP presidential candidate said the guidelines, which took two-and-a-half years to formulate and contain 18 chapters on a variety of issues, are a reflection of the party’s experiences and mistakes while in power.

“The guidelines are our commitment to the next generation and they are formulated with the aim of strengthening Taiwan and making it a coherent country,” Tsai said.

Ma’s diplomacy wins no respect

Liberty Times Editorial

Diplomacy is an important realization of a nation’s sovereignty. The main goal of diplomats is to uphold the independence, integrity and security of their country. If the steadiness of a nation’s diplomacy is judged by whether another country rejects a request to establish relations, then that country has lost autonomy over its diplomatic affairs. Could it then still be called a country?

This logic is common sense in today’s world, yet President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), vying for re-election, does not have even the most basic understanding of this.

A proud Ma recently said in a public announcement that his “flexible diplomacy” has allowed Taiwan and China to escape vicious competition for diplomatic allies.

US expert urges F-16 sale

Taipei Times

A leading US expert on the Chinese military says that by 2020, Beijing could have 2,000 or more missiles, nearly 1,000 modern combat aircraft, 60 modern submarines and a potential invasion force of many hundreds of thousands of troops “pointed at Taiwan.”

Richard Fisher, a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center near Washington, warned in an article in the Wall Street Journal that the US “should be under no illusion about Beijing’s motives.”

He says that while President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has made historic progress in defusing tensions with China, Beijing has signaled that it wants to end Taiwan’s democratic era.

Dealing with environmental messes

Pan Han-shen 潘翰聲

Two years after the onslaught of Typhoon Morakot, the predictions in the book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein are unfortunately being played out. The state, business, charities and other social control organizations are using this “opportunity” to force Aborigines down from the mountains, taking them away from their homes in order to get their hands on their traditional territory.

By contrast, the Aboriginal filmmaker Maywa Biho’s film Light up My Life shows how Aborigines are working hard to turn their situation around, with young Aborigines returning to the Kanakanavu tribe to start growing millet and other traditional crops again.

More Articles...