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Premier promotes Taiwan's case in `Post' opinion piece

Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) has called on the US and other democracies in the world to reject China's anti-secession law, arguing that the people of Taiwan have the sole right to determine their own future and appealing to the US as a fellow democracy to support that view.

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 (陳水扁) to engage China in dialogue, Hsieh wrote, Beijing "continues to stifle the democratic aspirations of its own people and to threaten Taiwan's democracy with military force. Unless the great democracies of the world say this behavior is not tolerable, we will only be inviting Beijing to believe it is."

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.
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