The Economist says Margaret Thatcher is “one of the few peacetime politicians who can claim to have changed the world.” If so, who could be the rest of “the few?”

Before discussing Taiwan's surging anti-nuclear power movement — a political tsunami that threatens to sink President Ma Ying-jeou's limping boat of a second term — perhaps some background is needed.

China's “twin sessions” (liang hui 兩會) taking place annually in Beijing — the congregation of the Chinese People Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People's Congress (NPC) — look a bit like composer Stravinsky's Rite of Spring that debuted a century ago. As March heralds the advent of spring, the chilly and smoggy Chinese capital is awaiting changes with millions of people champing at the bit for a Beijing Spring.

When the maddening cheers over Ang Lee's stunning Oscar success begin to die down, Taiwan's giddy citizens may need to pause and ponder a more sober question: Is it time for the island nation “to dream just a little bigger,” as U.S. first lady Michelle Obama suggested as a presenter, by trying to build a regional media center for the movie and media industry?

As a self-professed car buff, I saw in the just concluded Los Angeles Auto Show an alternative world in the offing: greener, definitely; and multipolar, inexorably, as America's dominance over automobiles is waning and giving way to growing foreign imports especially from Asia.

Three decades after Deng Xiaoping opened China to the outside world and unshackled the country's centralized economy, the then-impoverished and long-brutalized land of 1.3 billion that teetered on the verge of destruction after Mao Zedong's disastrous Cultural Revolution has morphed from an economic backwater into the world's second largest economy and a superpower of sorts.

Of Taiwan's politicians of varied political stripes, Frank Hsieh of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could well be one of those with the highest political IQ.

The Western Pacific suddenly looks ominously turbulent these days when dark clouds have been gathering over a string of tiny, barren islets which are claimed simultaneously by three neighboring states as their “inherent territories.”(固有領土) The dispute over the Diaoyu (meaning fishing) Islands in the East China Sea, which are called the Senkakus by Japanese, could spark a military conflict if the situation is allowed to escalate unchecked.

Many of the Olympics in the past had an epithet, like “the best ever” or “the most exceptional,” or “the safest.” The London Olympics which is winding down after 17 spectacular days, should be remembered as “the most inspiring Olympics.”

There is no denying that Taiwan has hit the skits and is in a bind. You don't have to look any further than the “Occupy Legislative Yuan” pandemonium at the nation's highest legislature.