The red-carpet treatment that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) will receive in Beijing will be nothing more than window dressing by the Chinese Communists as a "united front" against Taiwan, democracy activist Wang Dan (王丹) said on Saturday.
Wang, a leader of the pro-democracy student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, said that another reason that China will be falling over itself to embrace the KMT delegation is to curry favor with Washington, which has long advocated that cross-strait issues be resolved peacefully or via dialogue.
In a speech delivered to a group of overseas Chinese in Los Angeles, Wang suggested that Lien, who is scheduled to embark on his self-styled "journey of peace" to China tomorrow, should make it clear to Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) that change must come to the China's political regime, including democratization and freedom of speech. Lien must also speak on behalf of Taiwan to protect Taiwan's long-term interests, he said.
Wang, a Harvard University doctoral candidate who is currently on a research project on the West Coast, said that even if the KMT chairman signs an agreement with his Beijing hosts, it would be "just rubbish," given the true colors of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Noting that every written accord that the KMT and the CCP reached in the past ended up in the trash can of history, Wang, a history major at Peking University before the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, said that the CCP is untrustworthy and not interested in matters that only benefit others.
Wang, the founder of the Chinese Constitutional Reform Association in the US, has visited Taiwan many times since his visit trip in March 1999. He was in Taipei in January 2003 to launch his two new books written in Chinese -- one a collection of poems and the other a work of prose -- both published by Taipei's Locus Publishing Co.
He was in Taipei again in July 2003 for six weeks at the invitation of the Taipei City Government as an artist-in-residence.
Wang was jailed in July 1989 for his part in the pro-democracy demonstration and was released in February 1993. He was arrested again in October 1996 and sentenced to a further 11-year prison term.
In April 1998, he was released on parole on medical grounds and permitted to travel to the US for treatment -- a move that effectively sent him into exile.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires