Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

 
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Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

What Haiti earthquake can teach Taiwan

On Jan. 12, the Caribbean nation of Haiti was rocked by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake which shattered most of the buildings in the nearby capital of Port au Prince, including the presidential palace and killed over 110,000 Haitian citizens and residents from other countries and made at least three million people into instant refugees amid devastated infrastructure.

Although the magnitude of the earthquake was considerably less severe than the 7.6 magnitude temblor that struck central Taiwan on Sep. 21, 1999 and killed over 2,000, the epicenter of the Jan. 10 quake was located near the Haitian capital and other highly populated areas and the damage was magnified by widespread poverty and the poor building quality.

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Ma is on the wrong track for Taiwan

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou needs to rapidly learn the fundamental lesson that a political leader needs both to attract sufficient public support to win elections and to cultivate a sustainable public support through dialogue, transparency and consensus-building to exercise effective governance in a democratic society.

The need for such a lesson was shown by Ma's fist-shaking gloating over the 'successful" use by the kMT's nearly three-fourths legislative majority last Monday to ram undemocratic revisions to the Local Government Act as a "beautiful campaign" and his instruction to the KMT legislative caucus to continue to "act like a ruling party" by using the same heavy-handed tactics to overwhelm any further "irrational boycotts" by the opposition DPP.

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US arms sales crucial for Taiwan

The Obama administration is preparing a new arms package for Taiwan. Ironically, selling weapons to Taipei may be the best way for Washington to get out from the middle of one of the world’s potentially most volatile relationships — the one between China and Taiwan.

Relations between the two are improving, yet the former continues to point more than 1,300 missiles at the latter. The threat of military force remains a backdrop to expanding economic and tourist contacts across the Taiwan Strait.

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Raising the red lantern over Taroko

Earlier this month, Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁) said he had extended an invitation to Chinese film director Zhang Yimou (張藝謀) to produce an outdoor show at Taroko Gorge.

The news drew little attention, and it has yet to be announced whether Zhang, whose production company has created the Impression series of shows in West Lake, Lijiang and Guilin, has accepted the invitation, though his company has reportedly dispatched a team to assess the feasibility of the project. Still, the invitation itself is troublesome, showing local officials’ willingness to turn to China for talent when there is plenty of it right here in Taiwan. It is simply inconceivable that no one in the Taiwanese artistic community would be capable of orchestrating an outdoor show in Taroko. Neither Kaohsiung nor Taipei found it necessary to go abroad to find people to put together the opening and closing ceremonies of last year’s World Games and Deaflympics.

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Newsflash


Pro-Taiwan protesters on Tuesday shout during a rally in Seattle, Washington, as Chinese President Xi Jinping attends an event at the Westin Hotel nearby.
Photo: Reuters

US officials are reassuring Taiwan that no matter what Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) says about it during his summit with US President Barack Obama this week, Washington will not change its current policies.

“It is normal for a Chinese leader to raise Taiwan,” US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel told a media briefing on Tuesday.