In response to comments made by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) in his speech at Peking University last Friday, several Taiwanese university students yesterday gathered in front of National Taiwan University's College of Law to demand that Lien not denigrate the school.
In a backlash against the KMT chairman's assertion that NTU inherited its academic liberalism from Peking University, the students berated Lien for heaping praises on Peking University while undercutting NTU's prestige.
The group of students also demanded that the KMT chairman accept the growing Taiwanese consciousness and not deny it.
"It is preposterous to say that NTU inherited liberal traditions from Peking University," said Lin Pei-jing (林珮菁), a student at NTU's Graduate Institute of National Development.
"How could Lien compare an open-minded university with the suppressed Peking University? Look at the questions asked by Peking University students -- all were tailored to meet communist propaganda," Lin said.
"The voice of liberalism at Peking University was erased in the Cultural Revolution and the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989," Lin said.
While liberalism is stifled under the despotic Chinese regime, democracy sprouts from the NTU campus to Taiwan as a whole, Lin said.
"By contrast, Taiwan's Wild Lily Students' Movement (
With regard to academic performance, Lin observed, NTU is on the list of the world's leading universities and exceeds Peking University in many disciplines.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
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