Vice President Annette Lu (
She made her remarks while receiving Taiwan's delegation to this year's UN University Student Summit. She encouraged young people to promote Taiwan by "standing up, speaking out and moving forward."
Lu referred to the occasion in 1992 when she proposed that Taiwan strive to rejoin the UN and urged everyone to nurture self-belief.
Lu said the readmission of North Korea and South Korea to the UN after a 15-year absence had prompted the proposal.
She urged the students to be brave and ask themselves what they couldn't do that other people could do, and recognize that the answer was "nothing."
Referring to China's 22-year struggle to join the UN, Lu argued that it only takes hard work and conscientiousness to prize open the doors of the UN.
"Taiwan has already entered the WTO and is working vigorously to join the World Health Organization [WHO], which we believe will bring us much closer to UN membership," she said.
"We cannot just look at China every day and simply worry about its missile threat," she said. "We must open our eyes wide and place the entire world in our field of vision because Taiwan will become integrated with the world."
Lu said: "We must turn Taiwan into the Switzerland of the East, first making it a center for NGOs [non-government organizations]."
She also asked her audience to "look east towards the Pacific, not just west towards China."
The future, she said, should see the nation looking outward across the Pacific.
The delegates said students should develop a global perspective from an early age, understand international affairs and not simply focus on domestic politics. Others said that although Taiwan was not a UN member, the country could still make a contribution to the world.
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