May 20th, 2020
Inauguration ceremony of the Taiwan President with all-time highest approval rating
President Tsai Ing-wen’s second term inauguration ceremony ended today. She won by a landslide this January with 8.17 million votes (19.31 million eligible to vote), making a new record since direct presidential elections began in 1996. I suddenly noticed that only 4 people (Lee TH, Chen SB, Ma YJ, and Tsai IW) were listed as presidents in Taiwan’s democracy history.
Despite how often I said Taiwan’s democracy is young, it still amazes me every time when statistics strike me.
I watched commentators discussing Tsai’s second term on TV. They said that this difficult time — COVID pandemic — brought a sense of pride to the Taiwanese people.
While our government earned people’s trust with an unexpectedly low prevalence rate of the coronavirus (Taiwan CDC did a great job on data visualization of the pandemic by the way — website shared with this link), it also helped Taiwan gained positive reputation among foreign countries with face-mask diplomacy.
Dear readers, if you are not from Taiwan, you may not know that Taiwanese are often contradictory to our own nationality.
We have much to be proud of about our culture, yet some also felt inferiority as China boosts its economy. Some felt inadequate and helpless as China constantly threatened to take Taiwan by force.
If you ask me whether I am afraid of a war between Taiwan and China, well yes, of course. Who wouldn’t be?
But giving up right now just seems way too early. At least for now, I know my country and I still have so much to offer to the world.
Fun fact by the way: This picture demonstrates how to be “politically correct” for the Taiwanese government: Co-existence of “Taiwan (the silhouette)” and “R.O.C. (the flag)”. This is DPP style. On contrary, if KMT is in charge, we’ll probably see only the R.O.C. flag — without that ‘intentionally enlarged’ Taiwan silhouette.
Check this article if the fun fact interests you:https://medium.com/taiwanlady/why-it-is-politically-incorrect-to-claim-taiwans-independence-let-a-taiwanese-citizen-tell-b78a6385b6e1
