Safeguarding democracy is the only strategic advantage Taiwan has against a rising China and it would serve the nation’s interests to help promote democratization in China, Chinese dissidents said yesterday on the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
“Taiwan’s close attention to the Chinese democratic movement would promote its international image, be welcomed by the US and help win the hearts of the Chinese people. I see all pluses and no minuses in it,” Wang Dan (王丹), an exiled leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests who is now a visiting assistant professor at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, told a forum organized by the Democratic Progressive Party on human rights in China.
Wang presented an eight-point list of things Taiwan can do to advance democracy in China, with making the democratization of China the top pre-requisite for political negotiations across the Taiwan Strait.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Wang also encouraged Taiwan to help promote the development of Chinese civil society, with the aid of its more experienced non-governmental organizations, through Internet communication, by welcoming more Chinese students to Taiwan to experience democracy first-hand and by offering more support to Chinese dissidents abroad.
Taiwan could leverage the 1 million businesspeople it has in China by having them support the development of Chinese civil society and making China’s democratization the priority mission of the quasi-official Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, he said.
Wang added that by encouraging closer engagement with Chinese students in Taiwan, rather than ignoring them, Taiwan would be in a better position to engage China in the long term because those students would be China’s future.
“While the Chinese Communist Party rules China now, it is not necessarily China’s future. Any Taiwanese politician with a vision should look at the long term,” Wang said.
With respect to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, a “watershed moment in modern China’s history,” the clash between state power and human rights had intensified over the past two decades, he said.
“The moment that clash reaches the boiling point would be the beginning of democratization in China,” Wang said.
While closer bilateral engagement is welcomed, Qi Jiazhen (齊家貞), an Australia-based Chinese writer who served a 13-year jail term in China in the 1960s, warned Taiwanese that the Beijing regime “is now a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but at the end of the day, it is still a big, bad wolf.”
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique