Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Taiwanese identity in the spotlight

Taipei Times Editorial

Maybe it’s something in the water, but Chinese officials have developed the bad habit of airing their extreme nationalistic tendencies with a little more boldness when they find themselves in Japan, resulting in situations that often undermine Beijing’s objectives.

The latest such incident occurred on Saturday at the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival, when the head of the Chinese delegation, Jiang Ping (江平), accompanied by a robotic-looking Chinese actress, attempted to drill into the heads of the Taiwanese delegation that they were all Chinese. Faced with the refusal of Government Information Office Department of Motion Pictures director Chen Chih-kuan (陳志寬), who headed the Taiwanese delegation, and the organizers of the film festival to change Taiwan’s name to “Taiwan, China” or “Chinese Taipei,” an outraged Jiang announced that China was partially pulling out of the festival.

Fundraiser for Chin brings in more than NT$23m in a week

Taipei Times

Former Presidential Office -secretary-general Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟) and other pro--independence activists yesterday told a gathering over afternoon tea that they had raised more than NT$23 million (US$769,000) for political commentator Chin Heng-wei (金恆煒) over the past week alone, easily beating the initial objective of NT$5 million.

Chin, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in August and is undergoing treatment, received a warm welcome when he appeared at the party and bowed to express his appreciation.

Bandits and Thieves and Why Ma Ying-jeou Never Passed the Bar Exam?

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

The foreign media which seldom does its homework about matters Taiwan often describes Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jeou as the Harvard educated lawyer. However, though Ma did attend Harvard Law School, and did graduate from that school with an S.J.D., the fact remains that Ma never did pass the bar exam in the USA where he worked for law firms. (Would that be a reason why he returned to Taiwan?) But then, Ma also did not pass the more difficult bar exam in Taiwan where as a darling of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) he would have had a somewhat more favored status.

New Chinese subs raise questions

Taipei Times

Recent media interest about new types of submarines being developed by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) could provide important clues about China’s naval capabilities and intentions, a specialist on China said in a recent article.

“Whereas the development and deployment of the Chinese navy’s surface fleet have been prominently displayed in unprecedented scale in recent naval exercises both in the South and East China Sea, the expansion of China’s subsurface fleet appears to have been slowed in recent years,” Russell Hsiao, editor of the China Brief, a publication of the US-based Jamestown Foundation, wrote in the publication’s latest edition.

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