Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

It’s actually not just the economy, stupid

J. Michael Cole 寇謐將

As the saying goes, you stand where you sit. Not long ago, when Paul Wolfowitz was closer to defense than the corporatism he now embodies, he was instrumental in the drafting of alarming reports about the rise of the Chinese military and the threat that this represented to US security and, by extension, Taiwan.

Now that he is chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council, however, Wolfowitz sings a different tune. This does not mean that his views on the Chinese military threat have softened, but his new role forces him to look at the same object from a different perspective. By doing so, he appears to have lost sight of the fact that China remains a threat, especially in the proximate environment of Taiwan.

Security lax at super-secret base

Taipei Times

Defense experts and officials in Taipei and Washington had mixed reactions to the embarrassing news, published on Monday by Defense News and Kyodo news agency, that security at a key signals intelligence facility in northern Taiwan was so lax that neighboring cows were observed walking freely around the base.

Located in Linkou (林口), Taipei County, Linyuan Base collects imagery and signals intelligence deep inside China and at sea.

ECFA politics rear their ugly head

Taipei Times Editorial

The proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration hopes to sign with China sometime next month is, despite what Ma wants the public to believe, a very political affair.

Any doubt that this is not the case was dispelled on Sunday after the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported that customs authorities in Shenzhen City’s Yantian Port, one of the largest container ports in the world, said they would strictly enforce “country of origin” rules, meaning products made in Taiwan would have to be labeled “made in Taiwan, China” or be barred entry into the Chinese market.

Legislature must act as an ECFA watchman

Ku Chung-hwa 顧忠華

Taiwan is a democracy, and the basic principles underlying democracy are the separation of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, and the mutual checks and balances thereof. Of these three, it is the checks and balances of the first two, the executive and legislative branches of government, that are the most crucial. This is because they are instrumental in making sure government policy reflects public opinion, and in preventing it from going off in its own direction unchallenged.

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been in power for two years, and he has doubled as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman since last October. Over the past two years, the power of the legislature has been curbed to the extent that it is losing its ability to effectively keep the government in check or participate in policymaking.

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