Author: Editor

Reaching out to Undocumented Workers: The Best Way to Contain COVID-19 Outbreak

Written by Hong-zen Wang, Pei-chia Lan, Yen-fen Tseng, Chia-ling Wu, Chiung-chih Chen. On 26th February 2020, Taiwan Centre for Disease Control (CDC) announced that there had been 32 confirmed cases of infection in Taiwan. Case #32 was unknowingly infected when she was employed as the caregiver for Case #27 during the latter’s hospitalisation. After the CDC disclosed her identity as an ‘illegal’ Indonesian migrant worker, public fears surged; consequently, several county governments announced that they would tighten the measures and crackdown on undocumented workers.

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Can Migrant Workers Purchase Face Masks with Their Photo IDs?

Written by Ying-da Wong. The government seemed to take it for granted that all citizens and foreign residents are issued with an NHI Card, and that their NHI Card is valid. As a matter of fact, as detailed below, there is a wide gap between this presumption and reality. This gap may affect people’s rights or adversely curtail the effectiveness of disease prevention. So, before I move on, a fundamental question must be asked: are migrant workers entitled to the NHI, and are they issued with an NHI Card?

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How is Taiwan Facing the Coronavirus?

Written by Josie-Marie Perkuhn. As a precaution, most flights have been suspended, and entry spots have restricted access, such as maritime passages via Kinmen, Matsu or Penghu Island. President Tsai also assured that “as long as the two sides fully communicate and cooperate, I do believe that we will be able to take good care of our people”. However, controversy arose when on February 3rd evacuees arrived. Three of the 247 people on the charter flight had not been on the priority list, which Taiwan provided to China, and one was tested positive, becoming the 11th patient in Taiwan to be diagnosed.

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Taiwan’s Response to the Coronavirus Challenge of 2020

Written by Tsung-Mei Cheng. Taiwan government’s most favoured policy for fighting Covid-19 initially is to prevent it from entering Taiwan in the first place, according to Ming-Liang Lee, former health minister, “Czar of SARS” — commander-in-chief in the debacle against Taiwan’s 2003 SARS epidemic, and now a senior adviser to Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. To this end, Taiwan implemented strict travel advisories and entry protocols tiered by the risk level of the countries in question.

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Taiwan’s participation in the WHO in the outbreak of the coronavirus: the Old Global Health vs. the new

Written by Kai-yuan Cheng. Perhaps most fundamentally, Taiwan needs to make young Taiwanese believe that, despite our sad past and difficult present, going into global health as a Taiwanese is a promising career filled with opportunities and excitement. Building a global health-informed civil society will appeal to the new generation of governance bodies whose more flexible frameworks are ready to engage Taiwan, not necessarily because of the globalist ideal of leaving no one behind or the humanitarian concern for the Taiwanese population health, but because we have something to offer.

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Time To Bring Taiwan In From The Cold: Start Working Towards A Normalization Of Relations

Written by Gerrit van der Wees. A recent episode in Prague illustrates in two important ways that China’s relations with the West are changing fast. It shows the need for the US and Western Europe to reimagine relations with Taiwan, bring Taiwan in from the cold of political isolation, start working towards a normalization of relations, and find a rightful place for that democratic country in the international family of nations.

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The DPP’s Electoral Victory as a Political Regression?

Written by Ian Inkster. The conclusion is that the DPP should take the risk of dropping the rhetoric of China whilst seeking ways of beginning more positive diplomatic exchanges. And this should be undertaken on a broad basis. DPP negotiations that are not within a reasonably broad-based consensus at home are unlikely to progress far, for domestic quarrels do not make for confident diplomacy on either side of a table.

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THE MOUNTAIN GOD AND THE MONASTERY – THE PECULIAR CASE OF THE SHANSHEN SHRINE

Written by Wen-Ren Liu. When travelling around Taiwan one will inevitably encounter small temples whose religious affiliation is not immediately evident. The prevalence of such temples reflects an area where Chinese religiosity generally differs from the monotheism prevalent in many other societies – while many Chinese believe in the existence of a realm of invisible, non-material existence, they are less inclined to confine their belief to a specific God. In line with this, many religious sites in Taiwan demonstrate an interesting juxtaposition of spiritual beings and symbols pertaining to different religious/spiritual traditions, the main ones being Buddhism, Taoism (and Folk Taoism), and Confucianism…

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BRINGING BUDDHISM TO THE MASSES – LOOKING BACK AT SAN MIN BOOKS’ “NEW TRANSLATION” SERIES OF BUDDHIST CLASSICS

Written by Shang Haifeng.
This venerable and influential company began releasing publications on Buddhism as part of its “Series of Annotated Modern Translations of [Chinese] Classics” (古籍今注新譯叢書) as early as the 1960’s. This was at the same time that China’s heritage – and its religious heritage in particular – was suffering sustained attacks during the Cultural Revolution.

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Dispelling the monolith: The geopolitics of language in Taiwan and Hong Kong

Written by Justin Kwan. In an attempt to reach audiences in Taiwan and Hong Kong, China has attempted to use both Hokkien and Cantonese in its messaging through media and popular culture, eliciting mixed responses from locals in both places. In the case of Taiwan, Beijing resorted to a strategy of direct coercion in 2018, when it released a dubbed propaganda video in Hokkien titled ‘God of War’. The video featured bomber aircrafts flying around Taiwan, a warning from Beijing for the islands Taiwanese-speaking activists to curb their so-called ‘pro-independence’ activities.

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