Lighthouse Taiwan

On July 6, 2025, China’s Civil Aviation Administration announced the unilateral activation of a new connecting route—W121—linked to the controversial M503 air corridor. This action effectively opens a trio of west-to-east flight paths—W121, W122, and W123—running perilously close to the Taiwan Strait’s median line, in what appears to be an incremental strategy to assert de facto control over the Strait’s airspace. While Beijing claims this move is intended to ease congestion in cross-regional air traffic, the strategic and symbolic dimensions of this decision cannot be ignored. Taiwan, the United States, and like-minded democracies have expressed strong objections. The U.S. State Department urged China to resolve aviation issues through dialogue, while Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council criticized the move as destabilizing, illegitimate, and in violation of past cross-strait understandings. Yet China persists, cloaking military intentions beneath the veneer of civilian air traffic mana...

On June 18, 2025, the county of Huaiji (懷集) in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province disappeared beneath historic floodwaters. Streets vanished under rushing brown currents. Power failed. Emergency boats navigated through submerged city centers as over 180,000 residents were affected and 68,000 forcibly evacuated. The Suijiang River (綏江) breached its 1955 record, cresting at 55.22 meters — the highest since records began — in what officials declared a once-in-a-century flood. But this flood was not a natural accident. It was the outcome of decades of systemic negligence and a centralized governance model that rewards speed, secrecy, and short-term growth over transparency, resilience, and safety. In the People’s Republic of China, ruled solely by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), floods like Huaiji’s are not unfortunate events — they are inevitable products of authoritarian design. Dams Built to Serve Power, Not People The CCP's hydro-infrastructure has long been framed as a triumph of soc...

In its struggle against Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has not only resisted militarily but has also launched an assertive campaign on the cultural front. Through legislative measures passed in 2023, Ukraine banned the import of books and music produced by Russian citizens after 1991—unless those individuals have publicly denounced the Kremlin’s aggression. It also mandated greater representation of Ukrainian-language content in media and broadcasting. These moves are not symbolic—they are strategic, reflecting an understanding that language, memory, and identity are central to national sovereignty. Taiwan, similarly under constant threat from a powerful authoritarian neighbor, might do well to ask: Has it truly reckoned with the scope of China’s cultural influence? And more pointedly—has Taiwan begun to decolonize its language, education, and cultural spaces from the legacy of Chinese domination? Despite Taiwan’s vibrant democracy and resilient civil society, the pr...

Language, symbolism, and the problem of state-centered memory in a Taiwanese political documentary In Invisible Nation, a new political documentary directed by Vanessa Hope, viewers are invited to witness Taiwan’s journey from authoritarianism to democratic consolidation. Through elegant cinematography and tightly edited interviews with President Tsai Ing-wen and her key advisors, the film constructs a narrative of resilience, sovereignty, and progressive leadership. Yet beneath this polished presentation lies a deeper structural contradiction — one that ultimately compromises the film’s ability to fully represent the very nation it claims to make visible. I attended a screening with my teenage daughter. As the credits rolled, she turned to me and said, “That’s not the real Taiwan.” She was troubled not just by the sanitized treatment of the 228 Massacre and White Terror — events relegated to the film’s final few minutes — but also by the unsettling image of President Tsai ...

By Lōa Tiong-kiông (賴中強) China is no longer waiting for a change in Taiwan’s presidency to achieve its political aims. Instead, it is actively pursuing a strategy to paralyze Taiwan’s democratic institutions from the periphery inward—a strategy I call the “Lebanonization” of Taiwan. This approach is unfolding across four key beachheads: Taiwan’s offshore islands, the eastern regions of Hualien and Taitung, Indigenous communities, and local governments through fiscal decentralization. Together, they form the foundation of a new kind of influence operation aimed at weakening the authority of the central government. What Is “Lebanonization”? In 2016, China's state-run Global Times published an editorial warning the U.S. not to underestimate China’s resolve over Taiwan. It stated explicitly: “We must be capable of ‘Lebanonizing’ Taiwan if necessary, and make full military reunification a realistic option.” The reference to Lebanon is no accident. Much like how Iran built its influence ...

Not long ago, I was talking to an American friend about the NBA Finals. The conversation drifted to geopolitics — the Middle East, Ukraine, and eventually, the Taiwan Strait. He said, almost casually, “China might attack Taiwan soon. But it seems like Taiwanese people don’t really like talking about it.” He’s not wrong. In Taiwan, we prepare rigorously for university entrance exams, professional certifications, even overseas travel. But when it comes to war — the possibility of an attack from China — our collective instinct is to look away. There’s a viral saying in Taiwan: “If you tell someone they have an exam in two years, they’ll buy books and study. But if you tell them someone might try to kill them in two years, they’ll do nothing.” It’s meant as a joke. But it isn’t funny anymore. Just this week, Taiwan’s former president, Ma Ying-jeou, stood on Chinese soil and advocated for “peaceful, democratic unification.” A top Chinese official responded by saying the future of Taiwan mus...

When my grandparents greet neighbors in Sin-káng, Ka-gī, they do so in the lilting tones they have always called “Tâi-gí”—Taiwanese. The greeting is older than the Republic of China, older than Japan’s colonization, and certainly older than the bureaucratic term “Minnan,” a label imposed in the 1970s to bury a language’s name under layers of politics. Half a century later, it is time to exhume that name and restore it to public life. A Name With a Longer Pedigree Than the State Itself The word “Taiwanese” (臺語) first appeared in print in 1852, four decades before Japan seized Taiwan from a fading Qing empire. By 1895, Japanese officers, stunned that their Mandarin‐speaking interpreters were useless on the ground, rushed out phrasebooks such as Tâi-ôan Gí to talk with local Hoklo laborers. For the next half-century Tokyo’s colonial offices, Christian missionaries, and early Taiwanese writers—among them Liân-Ông and the radical newspaper Tâi-ôan Mín-Pó —used “Taiwanese” or...