Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Senator touts Taiwan’s ‘global significance’

Taipei Times

President Tsai Ing-wen, center, speaks to the members of a US delegation led by US Senator Lindsey Graham during their visit to the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Wang Yu-Ching, EPA-EFE

Taiwan is a “country of global significance” and its security has implications for the world, US Senator Bob Menendez said yesterday in a meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).

“With Taiwan producing 90 percent of the world’s high-end semiconductor products, it is a country of global significance, consequence and impact, and therefore it should be understood the security of Taiwan has a global impact,” Menendez, who is chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told Tsai at the Presidential Office in Taipei.

Being a Chiang is not enough

Taipei Times Editorial

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) — a great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and potential KMT candidate for Taipei mayor — recently proposed changing the name of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to the Taiwan Development Memorial Hall to commemorate all Taiwanese who helped build the nation over the past seven decades, including former presidents Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國).

Chiang Wan-an said that the two former presidents contributed greatly to the development of Taiwan during the Cold War era, and that this achievement should be the goal of any political party in Taiwan.

NTU must restore the reputation of Peng

Michael Lin 林子堯

Democracy pioneer Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) died on Friday last week at the age of 98. Many people have forgotten that Peng, as well as pursuing the independence and democratization of Taiwan, was also an authority on international law. He was a professor in the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University (NTU) from 1957 to 1964, serving as the youngest-ever head of the department from 1961 to 1962.

However, he lost his teaching position for drafting the Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation. Peng strove for freedom and democracy, but lost his professorship as a result. This was a blatant injustice, and articles that he later submitted to the media expressed his frustration over the matter.

Democracies and authoritarians

Huynh Tam Sang and Pham Do An

Democracy is in peril due to the rise of authoritarianism, while cooperation among authoritarians has become more menacing.

However, advanced democracies have failed to properly respond to the threat posed by illiberal powers.

A report this year by Washington-based non-profit Freedom House titled The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule sounded a warning.

“Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at coopting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties,” the report said.

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