Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (
After several of Chen's pro-independence advisors tendered their resignations over the 10-point consensus Chen reached with Soong, Mark Chen said that working in the government has enabled him to better understand the challenges facing the president.
"It is good that people have dreams. But as a government official, you have to take reality into account as well. It is hard for an outsider to appreciate the difficulties those in the government have gone through," the foreign affairs minister told reporters.
He said that government officials need to be pragmatic.
The foreign affairs minister, who accompanied Chen Shui-bian during his videoconference with members of the European Parliament on Tuesday night, said the president told the EU officials that it was beyond his ability to change the national title.
"The president really wants to have a breakthrough. He hopes to bring the country to a place where everyone wants it to be. But over the years, he has found it very difficult to do so," Mark Chen said.
The president's pro-independence advisers fear that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government is losing its vision on the identity of Taiwan, the minister said.
"If we study President Chen's remarks carefully, we will find he is still holding on to his principles. I believe the DPP will not lose its vision," Mark Chen said.
Many Taiwanese share the pro-independence activists' dream, but pressure from China makes the people's pursuit of their dream more difficult, he said.
"It seems that China has recently displayed some goodwill toward Taiwan by working with us on launching the cross-strait charter flights. However, on the diplomatic front, it keeps oppressing us relentlessly. China vowed to uproot all of Taiwan's existing allies and continues working toward that goal," he said.
The minister said that the Chen-Soong consensus would not affect the government's plan to rectify the names of the country's overseas representative offices and official agencies.
"The plan has nothing to do with the president's pledge to not change Taiwan's national title," Mark Chen 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:
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