Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Excuse our ‘technical issues’

Taipei Times

It was a slap in the Taiwanese government’s face when negotiations on a cross-strait mechanism to avoid double taxation broke down at the last minute on Monday.

However, it should be a precious lesson for President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration: Haste makes waste.

US should stop fooling around and back Taiwan

Nat Bellocchi 白樂崎

Policymaking is always an art of finding a balance between continuity and change: Governments want to maintain what is perceived as good or beneficial for their respective countries and at the same time make progress in the right direction. Circumstances change and force people, organizations and governments to adapt to the new circumstances.

The US itself is built on the precept of change. The nation was born out of the belief that Americans have the vision, ingenuity and perseverance to make the world a better place. Thus, our policies have always supported change … in the right direction. That is why it is peculiar that in one specific area we cling to the “status quo” — our policy toward Taiwan.

Learning the lessons of Kaohsiung

Liberty Times Editorial

On Dec. 10, 1979, the publishers of Formosa Magazine, a dissident monthly of which only four issues had been published, held a public meeting in Kaohsiung to mark Human Rights Day. The rally ended with clashes between the public and police and military personnel, in which dozens of people were injured. Two days later, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government arrested dissidents in a mass roundup.

Independent legislator and Formosa Magazine publisher Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介) and others were tried for sedition, convicted and sentenced to long jail terms. This event came to be known as the Kaohsiung Incident. This month, 30 years after the incident, the Kaohsiung City Government and civic groups have been holding activities to commemorate this key event in the history of Taiwan’s democratic development.

Ma’s enduring ECFA delusion

Taipei Times

For some time now, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said the government will seek to sign free-trade agreements (FTA) with other countries in the Asia-Pacific region after it signs an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China. The rationale is that somehow, after an ECFA is signed, Beijing will be more amenable to Taiwan signing FTAs with other countries.

It is inconceivable, Ma said recently, that in the entire region only Taiwan and North Korea — the two extremities of global integration — have yet to sign FTAs. True enough. Pyongyang, an isolationist and pseudo-communist regime, has done so by choice. By not providing any context to his statement, however, Ma is hinting that Taiwan is in the same situation for the same reasons, and implying his predecessors didn’t seek to sign FTAs with other countries.

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