Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Transitional justice more than statues

Taipei Times Editorial

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) on Tuesday announced the winners of a banknote design contest, which he held up as part of an effort to remove authoritarian symbols from the nation’s currency.

The DPP has over the past year taken aim at various authoritarian symbols as part of implementing transitional justice, most notably calling for the removal of statues and other references to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) from the nation’s schools. The issue has been a major point of contention as activists vandalize statues and push the government to act quickly to remove them, while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and older veterans strongly condemn such actions.

A trade war would harm China more than the US

Paul Lin 林保華

The US-China trade war has begun.

At first, China threatened revenge, saying it would “fight to the end” and warning the US to “pull back before it is too late.” When the threats were ineffective, China pretended to care more for the US than the US itself, saying a trade war would harm other nations and the US.

The trade war is certainly going to harm China more than the US. Without a war, China would continue stealing intellectual property and enjoy a substantial trade surplus, and the US would never be able to turn things around.

Surrender, opposition to US are silly ideas

James Wang 王景弘

Taiwan’s pro-unification media outlets and academics all have a rigid formulaic response to any issue related to Taiwan’s difficult international situation: Destroy the relationship between Taiwan and the US and between Taiwan and Japan, and if Washington is friendly to Taipei, slander the US and accuse it of playing the “Taiwan card” as a way of dealing with China.

The subtext of this response is that Taiwan should avoid being used by Washington, that moving closer to the US will only increase China’s pressure on Taiwan and that cross-strait relations should be improved to counterbalance the relationship with the US.

NTU ethics case requires clarity

Bih Herng-dar 畢恆達

The controversy over the selection of National Taiwan University’s (NTU) president has continued for two or three months, with no resolution in sight. In the study methodology course that I teach at the university, students keep asking whether the paper that NTU president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) presented at an academic seminar on May 6 last year really contains any improper citations or plagiarism, as some people have claimed.

The media have reported that, although the paper coauthored by Kuan and the master’s thesis of a student surnamed Chang (張) were written by different authors, a number of diagrams in the two contain the same information. However, both papers say that the diagrams were compiled and drawn by the researchers separately.

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