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.
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