Premier Frank Hsieh (
In an opinion article in yesterday's Washington Post, Hsieh also rebutted Beijing's analogy between the anti-secession law and US president Abraham Lincoln's efforts to prevent the secession of the southern states before the US Civil War, saying that Lincoln "wanted to preserve the Union in the name of freedom, not to deny it."
Hsieh used the article to contrast China's totalitarianism with Taiwan's democracy and friendship with the US, emphasizing the threat to Taiwan's democracy rather than the purely military aspects of the law.
"Taiwan agrees with the democratic vision of President [George W.] Bush: security will ultimately be guaranteed only through the advance of liberty," Hsieh wrote.
"It is no surprise that the most serious security problems we face in East Asia come from the policies being adopted by the region's two remaining one-party dictatorships: China and North Korea," he continued.
Titled, "Taiwan's Right to Freedom," the Post article says that today's mass rally against the anti-secession law was called to oppose the idea that China has the "right" to "use force to subjugate the people of Taiwan," and oppose the notion that "some 2,900 unelected and unaccountable Chinese `parliamentarians' have the right to determine the future of the 23 million people of Taiwan."
It says Beijing's US Civil War analogy is flawed because the Union that Lincoln sought to preserved was formed in 1787 by the ratification of the states in a process that rested on popular consent. "China's `law,'" Hsieh wrote, "is the product of one-party tyranny" and refers to a Taiwan "that has never been a part of, or under the sovereign control of, the People's Republic of China."
Despite repeated efforts by President Chen Shui-bian (
The premier also said that the process by which the anti-secession law was passed, including Beijing's refusal to release the text until after the National People's Congress agreed to the law, underscores the differences between the political systems of China and Taiwan.
That was in stark contrast to Taiwan's vibrant democracy, which has enriched the lives of it people, he said, while the Chinese people "live in a dictatorship with no political, religious or civic freedoms."
"Taiwan is an ally of the United States and has actively supported the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative. China has repeatedly been the subject of sanctions for its weapons proliferation activities around the world," Hseih wrote.
"Taiwan has renounced all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. China is expanding its nuclear arsenal and developing new generations of land- and sea-based ballistic missiles capable of reaching US soil," Hsieh added.
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