President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday used the opportunity of marking the 77th anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to reiterate the Republic of China’s (ROC) sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in the East China Sea, which are also claimed by Japan and China.
“We will not back down on protecting sovereignty over our territory, even by one inch,” he said.
Ma made the remarks at an exhibition in Taipei marking the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which is seen as the beginning of Japan’s full invasion of China in 1937 that led to the second Sino-Japanese war.
Photo: CNA
Ma said that “the mistakes in history may be forgiven, but the truth cannot be forgotten.”
Ma said the war was the largest in ROC history, in which more than 3 million military personnel and 20 million civilians died.
It ended with Japan’s surrender to US-led Allied forces in 1945 and was followed by the ROC government’s retreat to Taiwan in 1949 after losing to the Chinese communists in the Chinese Civil War.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
“The most important thing is how we view what has happened since the war [with Japan],” Ma said.
After the ROC won in 1945, it was able to implement political, economic and constitutional measures in Taiwan, creating a new chapter in ROC history, Ma said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) also attended the exhibition, which commemorates the nation’s victory in the war of resistance against Japan.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The exhibition focuses on battlefields in China and uprisings in Taiwan against Japanese colonial rule, Hau said.
Taiwan was a colony of Japan from 1895 to 1945.
Hau said that the goal of the exhibit is to remind people that “hatred can be relinquished, but history must be remembered and cannot be forgotten or tampered with.”
Running through Aug. 31, the exhibition is at Zhongshan Hall in Taipei, where the Japanese surrender ceremony was held in 1945.
Separately in Beijing yesterday, Hau’s father, former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村), challenged China’s belief that the communists defeated Japan in the war, saying the Nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) were responsible.
Hau Pei-tsun, 94, made the remarks to staff at China’s Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression while touring the facility in Beijing.
“No one should deny history,” he said.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS