With steely-eyed determination and a clenched fist held up high, a stern-faced President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Tuesday asserted his intention to safeguard Taiwan’s sovereignty and dignity as he slammed the WHO for addressing Taiwan as a “Province of China” in an internal memo, and held China responsible for pressuring the WHO into designating Taiwan as part of China.
Just before the public was swept away by Ma’s rhetoric and convinced of his will to stand up against China and anyone who stomps on Taiwan’s sovereignty and dignity, however, an event that took place on the same day on the other side of the Taiwan Strait led people to wonder whether Ma was at all sincere at the press conference.
It is ironic that as Ma spoke in Taipei about protecting the nation’s dominion and dignity and singled out China as the culprit suppressing Taiwan’s international standing, the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) honorary chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) was sharing the stage with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Beijing, with the latter speaking of China’s ambition to unify Taiwan.
If Ma is at all serious about safeguarding the nation’s standing, wouldn’t the Hu-Wu meeting have provided the perfect platform for Wu to voice Taiwan’s protest?
Ma, who doubles as KMT chairman, could very well have instructed Wu to seize the opportunity and showed the Ma administration’s resolve in defending the nation’s name and dignity.
Instead, Hu was left to trumpet his message of unification, saying that “commercial and cultural exchanges can serve as two bridges for cross-strait hand-in-hand and mind-to-mind cooperation.”
Hu also stressed that both the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party had to uphold the so-called “1992 consensus that adheres to the one China principle” — all without a squeak of opposition from Wu.
It is no wonder then that Taiwanese are left guessing whether Ma’s performance on Tuesday was simply more political theater aimed at fooling the public.
The disclosure of the WHO memo, which said WHO publications needed to use the terminology “Taiwan Province of China” and that Taiwan should be “listed or shown as falling under China and not separately as if they referred to a state,” brings to mind Taiwanese student Huang Hai-ning (黃海寧) and her fellow protesters confronting then-Department of Health minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) over his dubious representation of Taiwan at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva in 2009.
It would appear that their concerns have proven well-founded.
Many vividly recall that Yeh, in response to the protesters’ question, visibly lost his composure and abandoned all civility as he launched into a tirade, pointed a finger at Huang and said: “Shame on you” and “People like you are useless.”
At the time, Yeh dodged that simple question posed by Huang and her fellow protesters. Two years later, the answer has been laid bare for all to see — that Taiwan’s status has indeed been belittled by the international organization.
Who are the ones who should really be shamed for allowing Taiwan and Taiwanese to endure such an insult? Without need for hesitation, the public knows the answer.
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS