Waking local governments
China refuses to allow representatives of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led Taichung and Taoyuan to participate in the Cross-Strait Academic Conference on Urban Traffic in Shanghai to be held tomorrow.
This is only going to further alienate Taiwanese and play into the hands of DPP-led governments, all because of the Chinese communists’ “one China” preoccupation. In the end, who else do they have to blame but themselves?
Any civilized person should be concerned how China always places politics above academics. Professors and students from both sides of the Strait are only interested in studying issues related to transport. Why bring Taiwan’s pan-blue and pan-green politics into it?
Through its unilateral actions, China has intervened in the event’s preparations. That is bad enough, but it has done so completely out of the blue, totally disregarding that Taichung Transportation Bureau Director-General Wang Yi-chuan (王義川) had already received his invitation, was on the list and was in the process of preparing to host one of the sessions.
The conference is a city-level exchange, somewhere between a national central government level exchange and a local, grassroots social exchange, to effect practical change in urban transport.
However, the Chinese communists have seen fit to commandeer this academic event for their own “united front” work, differentiating between cities based upon the politics of their leaders and using a scorched earth strategy against green local governments.
Ever since the nine-in-one elections in 2014, Beijing has viewed the redrawn political map of Taiwan as something of a battleground and even though the conference is an academic event, China has decided its united front is to be waged upon it.
We should not be taking this lying down. Wang has already responded by saying that all preparation work for holding next year’s conference is now to be terminated. Local governments are beginning to awaken.
Chiu Yen-yu
Kaohsiung
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