Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

As a nation that touts democracy as one of its chief values, the US has always suffered from a slow learning curve on nationalistic self-determination and democratic development in Asia, particularly in Taiwan. As T.S. Eliot said in his poem The Hollow Men: “Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.”

Why? The quick and obvious excuse is that the US began as eurocentric. In its early, formative history, all settlements and subsequent colonies were on its east coast, and settlers and later immigrants came primarily from European nations, eg. England, France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands.

During a Lunar New Year’s Day visit to Xingtian Temple in Taipei, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Friday last week told reporters: “If China offers [Taiwan] a [COVID-19] vaccine, the government should not decline the offer.”

Putting aside Ma’s apparent Freudian slip — referring to “China” instead of “the mainland” — and his jettisoning of convention to engage in politicking during Taiwan’s most important national holiday, Ma has once again demonstrated his involuntary “wrecking instinct.”