Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

An awkward silence on Oct. 1

Taipei Times

October, when both Taiwan and China celebrate their national days, is an awkward month. For the past 60 years, it was enough to ignore China’s national day celebrations. But with relations changing, the government is criticized no matter what it does. Every country in the world sent representatives to the celebrations in Beijing or sent congratulatory telegrams. The only country afraid of making any statement was Taiwan, which lately pays such careful attention to pleasing Beijing.

Hungry factions and corporations

Chen Chao-chien 陳朝建

Last Saturday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國) secured a landslide victory in the Yunlin legislative by-election, while the proposal to set up casinos on Penghu Islands was voted down by local residents in a referendum. These results serve as a warning to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), but are they a sign of local factions and businesses’ waning influence over elections and political economics?

Taiwan's Aborigines Suffer More Than Morakot

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Typhoon Morakot did more than expose the incompetence and lack of leadership in the Ma administration; it highlighted another salient issue in Taiwan, the plight of its aboriginal people. Like many indigenous people suffering the fates of past colonialism, these people are pulled in opposite directions. Tugging on the one side is the wish to maintain their traditional life styles and identities; on the other side are the demands for survival and dignity in the modern, fast-paced, high-tech society surrounding them. As a result, they are being marginalized to the point of extinction. Even if they do fit in, at best, they often face the life of second class citizens teetering on the brink of welfare. If ever the aboriginal community needed vision and leadership, it is now.

The PRC at 60: a shame of a parade

Taipei Times

Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect that the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China would produce festivities symbolizing a new era of peaceful co-existence and cooperation with China’s neighbors. Even so, it is disappointing to note that the evolving use of the concept of “peace” or “peaceful” in Chinese government rhetoric simply had no place in a parade that bristled with Stalinist symbolism and offensive weaponry.

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