Squeezed in between the news about Beijing winning the rights to host the 2008 Olympic Games, Vice President Annette Lu (
In the same day's newspapers, we could see 50 "small peace angels" from China that would receive Taiwanese children in their homes for several days. Two days later a group of unificationists held a big meeting in the name of peace: Liang Su-yung (
Talking about "peace," one can be innocent or one can have ulterior motives. Both young and old angels are active in this mortal world. Apart from all these lively activities, we may not actually be able to attach a deeper meaning to the word peace.
If we approximate the word peace to the long experience of the international peace movement, the deeper meaning of peace is both the non-promotion of war and non-submission. This is also why it is not suitable to directly match peace with any future agenda. For example, matching peace with unification (or independence) is a misunderstanding of the moral dignity of not capitulating under any circumstances.
From another point of view, it is not the liveliness that is important to the peace movement, but a long-term insistence on non-violence.
In the history of peace movements, people such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and organizations such as Amnesty International have labored for years without any immediate rewards to realize the ideal of peace.
The goal is not cosmetic, impromptu activities, or to achieve ulterior goals; the goal of the peace movement is the peace movement itself.
Ping Lu is a social critic and columnist.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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