Mutual self-restraint is the only way to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait until China and Taiwan can find a more effective political and legal framework to address their disputes, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair-man Lien Chan (
Addressing the opening session of a Cambridge University-sponsored seminar on regional security, Lien said that while the US has played an important role in maintaining peace and stability in East Asia over the past few decades, the self-restraint shown by the countries in the region should also be credited for the achievement.
For example, Lien said, the Taiwan Strait has remained largely peaceful over the past several decades because the two sides have exercised self-restraint. Against that backdrop, he said, China has been able to carry out market reforms and Taiwan has managed to enjoy sufficient economic prosperity to withstand two oil crises and an Asian financial fiasco, as well as to complete its democratization process.
However, the self-restraint has gradually weakened since China conducted a series of live-fire military exercises and test-fired missiles into the Taiwan Strait in the run-up to the island's first direct presidential election in 1996, Lien said.
More worrisome to him, Lien said, is that three adverse tendencies have emerged since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took power in Taiwan in May 2000.
According to Lien, the three adverse developments are China's intensified military buildup, Taiwan's prolonged economic stagnation and what he called the DPP administration's failure to adopt a more prudent and moderate approach in dealing with cross-strait affairs.
Lien said if he wins the presidential election next year, his administration, while countering Beijing's military threat and political pressure, will avoid provoking the mainland in order to maintain regional peace and stability.
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