Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

‘Ditch Taiwan’ camp hits new low

Taipei Times Editorial

Calls by what remains a small number of voices in the US academic community for Washington to “ditch” Taiwan for the sake of better relations with China reached a new low last week with the publication of an opinion piece in the New York Times by Paul Kane, a former international security fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Earlier this year, a handful of articles were published in journals, including Foreign Affairs, making the case that realist US foreign policy required the abandonment of Taiwan to clear the way for a full relationship with China in difficult economic times. Reactions to those pieces then showed beyond doubt that the arguments advanced by those academics failed on several grounds, including moral.

Su Beng is an example for Taiwan

Paul Lin 林保華

The “three little pigs” donation campaign of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) signifies a further awakening among the public and represents a turning point in Taiwan’s democracy movement.

Wednesday was the 93rd birthday of Su Beng (史明), one of the pioneers of Taiwan’s nation-building and democracy movements. The Su Beng Education Foundation organized a concert to celebrate the occasion and this is a good time to revisit Su’s contributions and provide them as an example that may be followed during the struggles Taiwan may face in the future.

Taiwan’s identity needs defining

Shao Hsuanlei 邵軒磊

President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent proposals concerning a possible cross-strait peace accord and his suggestion that such an accord should be put to a public referendum have opened up one of the most central issues in the presidential election campaign — the question of how we define ourselves as a nation.

The pan-blue and pan-green camps hitherto packaged their positions on this issue using various slogans, such as Ma’s “three noes” (no unification, no independence and no use of force) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) “Taiwan consensus.”

No Progress in Anti-Corruption Under Ma Ying-jeou. Diane Lee's Case Contributes?

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

In a recent publication of the Corruption Index of Countries, it was noted that Taiwan had not made any gains in its anti-corruption efforts. This was true despite the fact that Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou touted the fact that his anti-corruption campaign would be one of the main thrusts of his first four years. For those who watch Taiwan closely and have seen the failings of the courts under Ma, and the double standard in the application of justice, this has come as no surprise.

One of the problems that Taiwan has faced as it emerged from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) one-party state, the White Terror, and martial law is the fact that the country had never achieved transitional justice.

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