Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Beans are spilled — ECFA is political

J. Michael Cole 寇謐將

It may have been inadvertent, but recent praise by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and US President Barack Obama for the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) cut through the smokescreen blown up by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration by directly pointing to its political impact.

Ever since the idea of a free-trade-like agreement between Taiwan and China was proposed, Ma and his government have emphasized time and again that the pact was purely economic in nature and had no political ramifications whatsoever. This position, stemming from necessary constraints, dovetailed with Ma’s promise not to enter political dialogue with Beijing during his term in office.

Investigations similar to puzzles

Taipei Times Editorial

Once you put together the details of an important crime, namely motives, weapons (if any), timelines and the relations between the parties involved, you can almost get the whole picture of what happened, making it possible to hold the real perpetrator responsible. Every one of the elements mentioned above is of equal importance in establishing the whole truth. There can be no truth if questions in any one of those areas remain unanswered.

This is particularly true in terms of the election-eve shooting of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Committee Member Sean Lien (連勝文), a son of former KMT chairman and vice president Lien Chan (連戰), on Nov. 26.

AIT chairman dispatched to Taiwan to explain Hu Jintao’s visit to Ma Ying-jeou

Michael Richardson

The State Department has dispatched American Institute in Taiwan chairman Raymond Burghardt to Taipei from his station in Washington, D.C. to brief Republic of China in-exile leader Ma Ying-jeou.

Burghardt’s trip to Taiwan, his 10th since his appointment as AIT chairman, follows closely the state visit of Hu Jintao, head of the People’s Republic of China, to Washington. The AIT is America’s defacto embassy in Taiwan since the United States does not recognize the sovereignty of the ROC over Taiwan.

Taiwan as the World Turns: the KMT and Gangsters, a Past that Won't Go Away

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

The investigation into the shooting of Sean Lien this past election eve is proving to raise more questions than it is answering. With contradictory claims and accusations as well as questionable methods, Taiwan finds that once again the tawdry and murky world of the relations between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and gangsters is not a thing of the past by any means. This is so despite the thin veneer of respectability with which Ma Ying-jeou always attempts to cloak his party.

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