Former president Lee Teng-hui (
In an explosive speech in Los Angeles on the last leg of a 13-day US tour that has infuriated Beijing, Lee called for capitalist nations to shun investment in China, which he likened to the 1930s appeasement policy towards German dictator Adolf Hitler and later Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
"As long as the capital from free countries continues to pour into China, China's already oppressive practices will become more entrenched and the ensuing and ever-expanding militarism will make the likelihood of transition to a peaceful country ever more unlikely," he said.
He said the US and the world community can influence whether China chooses to pursue regional domination or embrace democracy, and should unite to promote freedom in the world's most populous country.
"Free nations must develop and strengthen their global and regional cooperation in both supporting the people of China in their struggle for freedom and democracy as well as taking measures to stop Chinese acts of oppression and aggression," he said.
"Only in this way will we eventually see a China that is ready to take its place among the family of free nations in Asia," he added in a speech that received a standing ovation from around 100 academics, business leaders and Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher.
Lee accused the West of using a double standard in the way it engages communist China, compared with its isolation of the former Soviet Union that ultimately contributed to its collapse.
"People in the West believed that Soviet human-rights violations and threats to neighboring countries should be stopped.
"But they believe that China's violations of human rights and threats to neighboring countries are `special Chinese characteristics' that can be tolerated," he said.
Lee said that China was using oppression to "create illusory economic growth" that woos foreign investment.
This allowed China "to rapidly build up the economic, military, technological and diplomatic power of its slave system," he said.
"Under conditions that are tantamount to enslavement by the state, [businesses] from capitalist countries are enticed by cheap, obedient labor and cheap land and facilities owned by the state," he said.
Lee, whose last US visit in 1995 prompted Beijing to fire missiles into shipping lanes off Keelung and Kaohsiung, said his country's democracy was threatened by China and its military might and called on the US and he world community to stand up to Beijing.
Lee said China and neighboring North Korea were the last remaining "slave states" holding back the advance of democracy in Asia and threatening the region's security.
"If China insists on maintaining its one-party dictatorship, if it continues to exploit and suppress its people at home and expand its military threats against its democratic neighbors, then China will retain its current status and we will continue to witness the rise of a militarist hegemony," he said.
The speech by Lee was by far the most incendiary towards Beijing of his US visit, eclipsing the rhetoric he used in Washington.
Rohrabacher said it was time for Washington to stop pussy-footing around Beijing, adding that human rights were more important than business dollars.
"I'm not worried so much by whatever the reaction from Beijing will be," he told reporters, referring to Lee's hard-hitting speech.
"It's time for the US government to stop bending over backwards and trying not to make the dictators that run the government in Beijing angry, because we are being too friendly with people who elect their own democratic government in Taiwan," he said.
also see story:
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has