Tag: Chinese Nationalist Party (Taiwan)

Liz Truss, Britain’s Briefest Prime Minister, Meets Taiwan’s Leader

Media Library

The last former British prime minister to visit Taiwan was Ms. Truss’s political idol, Margaret Thatcher, in 1992. Taiwan was willing to look past contention in Britain over Ms. Truss, said Chen Fang-yu, an assistant politics professor at Soochow University in Taipei. “Taiwan really needs more of this kind of attention from every country, because only if more people visit Taiwan and more speak up for Taiwan, will the Chinese Communist Party realize that many people are paying attention to Taiwan, and so they should not act rashly,” he said…

Taiwan’s Opposition Picks Hou Yu-ih, a Moderate, for Presidential Race

Media Library

Once a dominant political force, Taiwan’s main opposition party lost the last two presidential elections in large part because it has promoted closer ties with China. Now, faced with voters who have been alarmed by Beijing’s aggression toward the island, the Kuomintang is placing its hopes on a new type of candidate: a popular local leader with a blank slate on the thorny question of China. The Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, on Wednesday nominated as its presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih, a 66-year-old, two-term mayor of New Taipei City and former…

In Taiwan, Friends Are Starting to Turn Against Each Other

Chin@Strategy

We’re proud of the vibrant democracy and economic success that we’ve built in spite of these conditions. We’ve shown that democracy can function in Chinese culture. This mix of anxiety, pride and perseverance is the essence of Taiwan’s character and something often overlooked by a world that tends to view Taiwan as a pawn in China’s rivalry with the United States. We are flesh and blood, too. Our character is perhaps best exemplified away from the political noise of Taipei, in rural farming areas and fishing villages where people are…

Why People Are Flocking to a Symbol of Taiwan’s Authoritarian Past

Chin@Strategy

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Ringed by barbed wire and high gray walls, and once the site of a secretive military detention center, the museum just south of Taipei makes for a surprising tourist hot spot. The Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, housed on the campus of a former military school, is a chilling reminder of the excesses of Taiwan’s not-so-distant authoritarian past when its rulers imposed martial law for four decades. The moldering concrete buildings with fading paint were once the site of secret tribunals where political dissidents were tried and…