BBC News: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The words “democratic Taiwan” appeared more times in the island’s national day celebrations this year than any other – by far.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n “We have brought the international spotlight to Democratic Taiwan,” declared President Tsai Ing-wen last week, in her last national day address before she steps down as the first democratically elected female president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The people of Taiwan will remain a democratic and free people for generations to come,” she added. It was both an assertion of the island’s identity and a call for the world to take note and not allow this vibrant and open society to disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The head of Taiwan’s legislature, You Si-Kun, had touted those same credentials in his opening remarks: “The UK’s Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Taiwan the number one democracy in Asia and number 10 in the world.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The importance of these words to Taiwan, which feels increasingly threatened by Chinese claims to its territory, cannot be overstated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Democratic Taiwan” has become its brand – its pitch to the world for why this self-governed island of 23 million people matters, and why it should be protected from being gobbled up by China. And yet for an $800bn chip superpower Taiwan has very few official friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a time when Taipei had a military alliance with the United States and a seat on the UN security council. It was run as an anti-Communist dictatorship and could count on support from like-minded regimes from Seoul to Santo Domingo, Pretoria to Panama City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now those Cold War-era friends are almost all gone. The threat to Taiwan is more severe than ever and Taipei is in desperate need of new allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That challenge was on sharp display at Tuesday’s ceremony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BBC News: The words “democratic Taiwan” appeared more times in the island’s national day celebrations this year than any other – by far. “We have brought the international spotlight to Democratic Taiwan,” declared President Tsai Ing-wen last week, in her last national day address before she steps down as the first democratically elected female president. “The people of Taiwan will remain a democratic and free people for generations to come,” she added. It was both an assertion of the island’s identity and a call for the world to take note and not allow this vibrant and open society to disappear…. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35591,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35589\/revisions\/35591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}