National Tsing Hua University student Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) yesterday apologized for his attitude when speaking to Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) at a legislative meeting on Monday, and urged the public to focus on the movement against media monopolization.
“Some people may think I had a bad attitude that day. Some people may think that my attitude was okay. Whether I meant it or not, certainly some people’s feelings have been hurt by the way I talked,” Chen told a student rally on the university’s campus in Hsinchu City.
“For those whose feelings have been hurt, I would like to sincerely apologize to them, and apologize to our school president,” he said.
Photo: Wang Chin-yi, Taipei Times
“From now on, can we stop arguing about the issue of attitude?” he asked, after bowing three times.
“We are here, because we are against media monopoly. We are here, because we are against Chinese intervention in our freedom of the press. We are here to defend the bottom line in freedom of the media,” he said.
Chen’s apology and remarks drew a round of applause and cheers from his peers.
He said the campaign against media monopoly would continue regardless of the incident.
When invited to take part in a legislative meeting on Monday, Chen accused the minister of being a liar and a hypocrite who does not know remorse.
On Tuesday, the Chinese-language United Daily News devoted its front page and another full page inside to criticizing Chen as being ill-mannered.
The reports triggered a wide debate on whether it was appropriate for a university student to make such comments toward a minister in the legislature.
The university immediately issued a press release condemning Chen’s attitude and apologized on behalf of Chen, which led to yet another wave of debates on whether it was appropriate for the university to do so.
Hundreds of Tsing Hua students staged rallies on campus on Wednesday, while as many as 95 faculty members signed a petition protesting the university’s statement of apology.
On Thursday, Tsing Hua chief secretary Chien Chen-fu (簡禎富) acknowledged that the school misjudged the situation in issuing the apology.
He was quoted by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) as saying that he asked his secretary to draft the statement after only seeing the headline in the United Daily News.
Students launched the campaign against media monopoly after learning that a consortium including Want Want China Times Group (旺旺中時集團) chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明) was buying Next Media Group’s (壹傳媒集團) four media outlets in Taiwan.
They said they oppose control of the mass media being concentrated in the hands of a few conglomerates and urged the government to scrutinize the transaction.
NOVEMBER ELECTIONS: The KMT urged the CECC to exclude Taiwanese from the arrivals cap, as they would lose their right to vote if they could not return by July 26 The COVID-19-related border control measures and the cap on the number of international arrivals are not being eased, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday as it reported 112 imported cases of the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is CECC spokesperson, said a meeting was held yesterday morning in which the Cabinet decided that current border control measures would remain in place. He said the main considerations were global COVID-19 cases increasing 21 percent last week, imported cases of Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 continuing to be detected
TIMING: 'The CHIPS Act funding is crucial for us. In other words, if the act’s passage is delayed for too long, we will certainly need to adjust,’ chairwoman Doris Hsu said GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓) plans to start construction on a US$5 billion wafer fabrication facility in Texas in November, after passage of the US$52 billion Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act. The fab would be the largest of its kind in the US and one of the largest in the world, with a monthly capacity of 1.2 million wafers, GlobalWafers said, adding that the investment would be the first new fab in the US in more than 20 years and critical to closing a semiconductor supply chain gap. The world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier said the project, which
Samsung Electronics Co yesterday commenced mass production of 3-nanometer chips that are more powerful and efficient than predecessors, beating rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to a key milestone in the race to build the most advanced chips in the world. South Korea’s largest company said in a statement that it was beginning with 3-nanometer semiconductors for high-performance and specialized low-power computing applications before expanding to mobile processors. By applying so-called Gate-All-Around transistor architecture, Samsung’s 3-nanometer products reduce power consumption by up to 45 percent and improve performance by 23 percent compared with 5-nanometer chips, it said. Samsung’s push to be first
Three to four tropical storms or typhoons are expected to hit Taiwan this year due to a weak La Nina effect in the northwest Pacific Ocean, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday, as typhoon season begins next month. Taiwan’s typhoon season generally lasts from July to September, with most typhoons occurring in August. Weather Forecast Center Director Lu Kuo-chen (呂國臣) told a news conference that a weakening La Nina is expected to have less of an effect on Taiwan. “The climate simulation we conducted, and those conducted by other meteorological agencies around the world, showed that the number of typhoons that