While Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) was moving from table to table toasting attendees at a lunar year-end banquet in Taipei on Tuesday last week, veteran entertainer Lisa Cheng (鄭心儀) — also known as Cheng Hui-chung (鄭惠中) — suddenly slapped her in the face.
Lisa Cheng later said that she assaulted the minster for trying to abolish Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) in a message of support for Lisa Cheng on Facebook said: “Who gave the Democratic Progressive Party permission to uproot [the nation’s] culture, brainwash the public, engage in desinicization and willfully sever its ties to its origins?”
We should really thank both Lisa Cheng and Hau — her for her slap and him for his Facebook post. Their actions should help wake the public up from its trance-like futile pursuit of reconciliation and coexistence with the KMT. This is especially true for university students who have been attentively hosting the Coexistence Music Festival since 2013.
Lisa Cheng’s administering of a smack in the chops has once again revealed the KMT’s true colors — a political party whose members have consistently pursued a historical narrative at odds with the policy of coexistence favored by the majority of Taiwanese.
The people who seek a path of coexistence also include so-called waishengren (外省人) — “Mainlanders,” those who came from China with the KMT after the war and their offspring. Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Chairman Lau Yi-te (劉一德) is a good representative of this group.
At a 30-year retrospective exhibition on the 228 Incident held last year at the National History Museum in Taipei, there was a video segment that contained an interview with Lau. The interviewer asked Lau why, as a Mainlander, he lent support to the 228 movement.
Lau replied: “Once you understand the history of the 228 Incident, it is impossible not to feel sympathy for Taiwanese.”
If even Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) contributions to China can be criticized as being 10 percent good and 90 percent bad [former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the official line that Mao was “70 percent right and 30 percent wrong”], then in today’s democratic Taiwan, we should no longer pursue personality cults.
We should be even stronger in our insistence on accurately portraying Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) contributions and mistakes.
This is not a question of whether we should purge all aspects of Chiang or engage in all-out desinicization. It is about the public having the confidence to begin confronting historical truths — a matter of awakening rather than a political matter of purging all references to Chiang and desinicization.
Following South Africa’s transition to democracy, justice Albie Sachs was appointed to the Constitutional Court by then-South African president Nelson Mandela in 1994.
Sachs famously said that one country cannot have two histories and cultures.
If Taiwan is to pursue a path of reconciliation, it needs to find a way to construct a common foundation for coexistence out of two diametrically opposed historical perspectives. We need to find a way forward through the tangled web of disagreement and dissenting views.
Today Taiwan stands for democracy, liberty, the rule of law and human rights. That is a considerable achievement. We should treasure it as one.
Lin Jui-hsia is director of the Taoshan Humanity and Arts Institute in Chiayi County.
Translated by Edward Jones
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
The past few months have seen tremendous strides in India’s journey to develop a vibrant semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. The nation’s established prowess in information technology (IT) has earned it much-needed revenue and prestige across the globe. Now, through the convergence of engineering talent, supportive government policies, an expanding market and technologically adaptive entrepreneurship, India is striving to become part of global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision of “Make in India” and “Design in India” has been the guiding force behind the government’s incentive schemes that span skilling, design, fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, and
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.