Despite President Chen Shui-bian's (
Chen avoided the controversial street protest by attending an event in southern Taiwan. Some 150,000 people took to streets in downtown Taipei last Saturday in an event organized by the Alliance to Campaign for Rectifying the Name of Taiwan.
Political commentator Pu Ta-chung (卜大中) wrote in a Chinese-language newspaper that Chen was right to avoid the march if he wanted to downplay the sensitivity of the issue.
"What concerns Chen most is not China, but the US. As the US is legally obligated to defend Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act, Chen knows that Taiwan must not mess around with what the US wants when it comes to Taiwan's situation," Pu wrote.
It is understandable that Chen and the US were both cool toward the campaign because of China's growing dominance, Pu wrote.
"The government and the campaigners should realize this political reality. The wise way to go about this is to avoid pushing too quickly toward the goal. Let the people speak their minds while the government avoids interference," Pu wrote.
Lee Yung-chih (
Lee said that the political reality does not necessarily go against Taiwan's interests, as long as the people show strong and consistent determination to decide their own future.
"We have seen Palestinians fighting for their own country for 50 years. Had they not voiced their wishes, the world would not have heard their demands," he said.
"The situation is the same here in Taiwan. The Taiwanese people must be strongly aware of the cause for an independent Taiwan so that the world will understand this cause," he said
"As long as we see more people stand up for the campaign drive, the world will not ignore this intense and strong appeal from the people here," he said.
Lee also said that a drive for independence would not necessarily go against US interests.
"The US protects Taiwan in order to protect the US' interests. It would not be in the US' interest to see Taiwan being taken over by China -- if that happened, security in the East Asian region would become tremendously unbalanced and the US does not want to see China have that kind of growth in power," Lee said.
Lee said that the people of Taiwan must continue fighting for their cause.
"Taiwanese people have to continue this effort based on their own interests and we'll see how our interests can work out with the US'. The government might come to some kind of compromise with the US, but the Taiwanese people can never shy away from the campaign," Lee said.
Following last Saturday's rally, the Alliance to Campaign for Rectifying the Name of Taiwan is planning to stage a bigger march next year calling for more than 500,000 people to join the event.
Chief organizer of the campaign Wang Cheng-chung (
"The best tool to change the nation's name is through the construction of a new Constitution and we would invite the new president to join the campaign and ask him to establish a constitutional task force," Wang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching