Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

All’s well that ends well, or so the government would have us believe now that Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) has decided to stay on in his position a week after tendering his resignation over frustrations facing his National Health Insurance (NHI) reform plans.

Yaung’s change of heart followed a meeting with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Wednesday where the president backed his proposal on increasing premium payments in an attempt to save the financially stricken NHI scheme from collapse.

When former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) roped the Taiwanese into his fight against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after taking over Taiwan, his planners explained the CCP’s basic doctrine this way: “What is mine is mine, and what is yours is also mine. Some things are to be taken as common property and I will therefore take yours.”

China and its sympathizers would say that the wording of this outline was simply an attempt to stigmatize and demonize China, but I would say it is a fairly accurate way to describe the idea of “one China.”