Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) urged the public to reflect on the huge impact the establishment of diplomatic ties between the US and the PRC in 1978 had on Taiwan with the re-release of her book Taiwan: The Past and the Future.
Lu said that only by re-electing herself and President Chen Shui-bian (
"Over the past two decades, President Chen Shui-bian, other Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] veterans and I have proved that human power can rewrite history and create a new world," Lu said.
"In the presidential election in 2000, Taiwanese chose the Chen-Lu ticket to terminate the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) authoritarian administration," Lu said.
"Since [KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰)] thinks that a single person cannot push but only follow history, then let Lien and [People First Party (PFP) Chairman James] Soong (宋楚瑜) go home and rest because their notions show that they are conservative, pessimistic, passive and led by history. Let them continue to sleep on the old stage of history," Lu said.
To review the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and China on Dec. 16, 1978, and its huge impact on Taiwanese society, Lu re-released Taiwan: The Past and the Future, a book she invited friends to write in 1978 in the hope of helping Taiwanese reflect on domestic politics and international relations at that time.
In that year, when Taiwan was preparing to hold elections for the legislature, Control Yuan and National Assembly, Lu, then a Harvard doctoral candidate, realized that official ties between Taiwan and the US were going to end soon.
However, the KMT administration blocked all information domestically, so she decided to return home and participate in the election to tell the people about the dire situation Taiwan was in.
"But back then Taiwan did not have freedom of speech. The KMT administration not only blocked bad news, minister of foreign affairs Shen Chang-huan (
"To present the real information to Taiwanese, I decided to run in the election, but I did not expect to win," she said.
After she made the decision, she invited a group of friends, including Taiwanese academics in the US and American scholars, to gather information in Harvard's library and work on Taiwan's historical records.
Only part of these results was published during the election campaign back then, and in the next year, to reflect on the breaking of the ties between the ROC and the US. The results were collected and published as a book.
But because of the Kaohsiung Incident, the book was banned and Lu was jailed.
DPP Legislator Chiu Chui-chen (
Dissents would talk only about the legislative elections and constitutional theory, and no one talked about Taiwan's international status, Taiwan's sovereignty or the relationship among Taiwan, the US and China.
"Annette Lu's most important contribution in that movement was to enlighten Taiwanese people to think about Taiwan's sovereignty and the impact Taiwan's international relationships have on Taiwan's future," Chiu said.
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