Chinese-American historian and Tang Prize laureate Yu Ying-shih (余英時) yesterday reiterated his support for and admiration of Taiwan’s Sunflower movement.
“I was very touched by the Sunflower movement a while ago… the students did not leave the legislature until they thoroughly cleaned up the place and they left peacefully,” the Princeton University emeritus professor said during a talk in Taipei on the importance of cultivating humanistic qualities in modern society.
“It was a remarkable movement,” the 84-year-old China-born academic said.
Photo: CNA
The Sunflower movement refers to student-led protests in March and April this year against the way a trade in services agreement with China was handled by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government. The protesters occupied the legislature for almost 23 days and at one point stormed the Executive Yuan building, drawing mixed but mostly sympathetic reactions from the media.
In a press conference a day earlier, Yu, although approving of the students’ opposition, stopped short of expressing full support for the demonstrations, saying he is against “violent protests” in a democratic society.
In yesterday’s speech, Yu said that he had no intentions of “appeasing” people or asking them “not to rebel.”
He said citizens in a democratic society should protest and express their dissatisfaction with the government, but in a peaceful way, because if all efforts fail, they can still resist the government with their ballots.
Yu, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, said Taiwan’s democratization process has great significance in Chinese history because China’s dynastic changes and power shifts have always been compelled by military force.
Taiwan’s democracy broke that cycle of violence and counters the saying that Chinese culture is opposed to the ideas of democracy, freedom and equality, he said.
In fact, he said, the first people who brought the idea of democracy to China were academics influenced by Confucianism, such as Kang Youwei (康有為, 1858-1927) and Yan Fu (嚴復, 1854-1921), proving that traditional Chinese thinking was not against democracy.
The concept of democracy also appears in a book by Chinese scholar Huang Zongxi (黃宗羲, 1610-1695), in which Huang condemned autocratic rule and proposed using schools to hold discussions on public affairs, he said.
Yu is the first winner of the Tang Prize in Sinology. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Yu is an outspoken supporter of the democracy movement in China and is known to have sheltered young refugees who fled China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
OBJECTS AT SEA: Satellites with synthetic-aperture radar could aid in the detection of small Chinese boats attempting to illegally enter Taiwan, the space agency head said Taiwan aims to send the nation’s first low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite into space in 2027, while the first Formosat-8 and Formosat-9 spacecraft are to be launched in October and 2028 respectively, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council laid out its space development plan in a report reviewed by members of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee. Six LEO satellites would be produced in the initial phase, with the first one, the B5G-1A, scheduled to be launched in 2027, the council said in the report. Regarding the second satellite, the B5G-1B, the government plans to work with private contractors
‘OF COURSE A COUNTRY’: The president outlined that Taiwan has all the necessary features of a nation, including citizens, land, government and sovereignty President William Lai (賴清德) discussed the meaning of “nation” during a speech in New Taipei City last night, emphasizing that Taiwan is a country as he condemned China’s misinterpretation of UN Resolution 2758. The speech was the first in a series of 10 that Lai is scheduled to give across Taiwan. It is the responsibility of Taiwanese citizens to stand united to defend their national sovereignty, democracy, liberty, way of life and the future of the next generation, Lai said. This is the most important legacy the people of this era could pass on to future generations, he said. Lai went on to discuss
MISSION: The Indo-Pacific region is ‘the priority theater,’ where the task of deterrence extends across the entire region, including Taiwan, the US Pacific Fleet commander said The US Navy’s “mission of deterrence” in the Indo-Pacific theater applies to Taiwan, Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Stephen Koehler told the South China Sea Conference on Tuesday. The conference, organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), is an international platform for senior officials and experts from countries with security interests in the region. “The Pacific Fleet’s mission is to deter aggression across the Western Pacific, together with our allies and partners, and to prevail in combat if necessary, Koehler said in the event’s keynote speech. “That mission of deterrence applies regionwide — including the South China Sea and Taiwan,” he