President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that it is “not appropriate” for former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) to attend a military parade in China that is to be held to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Ma was on his way to the Taipei City Council building for a vote of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Central Standing Committee when he was asked by journalists to comment on Lien’s trip.
Ma said the Mainland Affairs Council and the Presidential Office have already made their stances clear over the past week, by saying that “It is not appropriate [for Lien] to attend, and that is the stance of the Republic of China [ROC] government.”
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said it was unnecessary for him to repeat what various government agencies, the party and the public have said about Lien’s Beijing visit, but he has “only one thing to say, which is that the eight-year War of Resistence Against Japan was won and led by the ROC with its leader Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).”
If Lien insists on going, he has to “resolutely speak the truth about history so as to live up to what Taiwanese and ROC citizens expect of Lien and the government,” Wu said.
KMT Legislator Alex Fai (費鴻泰) was more straightforward about his disapproval.
“Forgive me for my bluntness, but I think [former KMT] chairman Lien should not go. The Chinese Communist Party wants to seize the [rights to interpret the] history concerning the eight-year resistance war by celebrating it with a military parade, and that would hurt too many people’s feelings,” he said.
Former KMT vice secretary-general Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭), who is to visit China with Lien, according to a report in the Chinese-language Apple Daily, responded to criticism of the visit yesterday by saying that Lien had been carefully considering his decision to go since February, which was when Lien received the first in a series of invitations from Beijing.
Chang said that a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is a serious undertaking that cannot be canceled lightly, adding that Lien is aware of how the public feels and he is not attending for the sake of it, but to personally convey to the Chinese leadership the wishes of Taiwanese for cross-strait peace and regional stability.
When asked whether he considers attending the military parade too politically provocative, Chang was reported as saying that the parade was about peace and that officials from between 40 and 50 other nations are attending, and they surely have no interest in supporting China’s militarism.
Chang told the Chinese-language United Daily News on Friday that Lien plans to respond positively to Xi’s call for the two sides of the Taiwan Strait to “make use of historical materials together and write history books together.”
“If there is an absence of cross-strait communication and common research and both sides hold to their respective narratives, a consensus is impossible,” Chang was quoted as saying.
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