Word: chen
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...This is the Taiwanese heartland, where kids still play marbles with pits of dragon eye fruit the way Chen did when he was a boy. They still go swimming in the creek and roast water chestnuts on charcoal braziers. When Chen was growing up here during the 1950s, Taiwan was still struggling for survival; today's grandiose notion of cultural identity was a distant luxury. While the newly arrived leaders of the Kuomintang, freshly landed from the mainland, were building their capital in Taipei, for the native Taiwanese, descendants mostly of Fujian and Guangdong natives who settled during the 17th...
...prepares to embark on a state visit to Latin America that will include transit stops in New York and Houston, Chen is readying a turn on the international stage. In Beijing, however, Chen's visit to the U.S. has caused barely a blip. China is "firmly opposed" to the trip, of course, but the government hasn't issued a statement since the transit stops were announced. Indeed, Beijing's position on Chen has been to have no position: the state-run media hasn't yet mentioned him by name. But Chen's anonymity in Beijing is a stark contrast...
...Chen, these same geopolitical forces have created a unique opportunity. A new President in the U.S. Possibly a new leader in China within two years. And some shifting in Beijing's rigid Taiwan policy: Vice Premier Qian Qichen recently stressed that Taiwan and the mainland are part of one China. All previous doctrines had hinted that Beijing should govern Taiwan. The change in tone suggests there's room to negotiate. For Taiwan and its President, these are heady times. But can the 51-year-old seize the moment and make...
...Taiwan's twenty- and thirtysomethings, to whom Chen probably owes his March 2000 plurality victory when he took just 39% of the overall vote, the notion of reunification with the mainland?even along the lines of Hong Kong's "one country, two systems"?is not so much unpalatable as non sequitur. Why, exactly, should Taiwan subsume its coolness to China's cultural bludgeon? There really isn't a good reason except some notion that one China is better than two. But in more than 50 years as a de facto state, and particularly over the past decade, Taiwan has forged...
...year ago it was enough that Chen was Taiwan's pioneering non-Kuo-mintang (KMT) President, the first head of state not affiliated with Chiang Kai-shek's founding party. A year into his term, Chen's novelty as an opposition figure has worn off. He is mainstream now, occupying the political center, and has to present himself more as what he is than what he is not. Chen has to give people something to believe in, show the taxi drivers in Kaohsiung and the betel nut salesgirls in Chiayi what he is about. He must now explain, vividly, what...