An overseas Taiwanese academic yesterday urged Chinese expatriates in the US to learn from Taiwan's experience and help speed up the democratization process in China.
Peter Chow (周鉅原), a professor at the City University of New York, said that during the 1960s and 1970s, Taiwanese students studying abroad and other expatriates worked with democracy activists on the island, accelerating the collapse of the authoritarian regime in Taiwan.
Chinese students studying overseas and expatriates "should not just jeer at the negative reports about Taiwan's democracy," he told a seminar sponsored by the New York branch of the Global Alliance for Democracy and Peace. Instead, they should learn from Taiwan's democratization experience and avoid repeating its mistakes when they help their motherland democratize, the economics professor said.
As the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre approaches, Chow said most Chinese people, influenced by the Chinese regime's media distortion and society's fixation on making money, have gradually forgotten the June 4 student movement which sought democracy for China.
Chow said he does not see any possibility in the near future of China's communist regime acknowledging its mistakes in militarily cracking down on the student protesters in 1989 in Beijing.
"If the inheritors of power in Beijing were to boldly acknowledge that something very bad had happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989, they would probably win even greater support," he said.
Li Hongkuan (李洪寬), a Chinese pro-democracy activist and Internet expert, said two "good conditions" currently exist for a similar democracy movement to erupt again in China. These are the fact that the Beijing regime has not changed at all since 1989, in terms of opening itself up to dissident voices, and that communications technologies have progressed tremendously, making it impossible for the regime to suppress information to the same extent that it did 16 years ago. However, Li also said there is no doubt that the Beijing authorities will adopt a strategy of "nip it in the bud" when it comes to suppressing any democracy movement that may arise.
"They will never tolerate a similar democracy movement; they have better riot gear than before; they will never relent in arresting activists," he said.
Chow elaborated on his view that the Beijing regime has not changed, saying that it has failed to solve the social problems that led to the 1989 student movement and that the problems have actually expanded to the areas of education, housing and income, leading to feelings of frustration among a greater portion of society.
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is
FINAL COUNTDOWN: About 50,000 attended a pro-recall rally yesterday, while the KMT and the TPP plan to rally against the recall votes today Democracy activists, together with arts and education representatives, yesterday organized a motorcade, while thousands gathered on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei in the evening in support of tomorrow’s recall votes. Recall votes for 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu City mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) are to be held tomorrow, while recall votes for seven other KMT lawmakers are scheduled for Aug. 23. The afternoon motorcade was led by the Spring Breeze Culture and Arts Foundation, the Tyzen Hsiao Foundation and the Friends of Lee Teng-hui Association, and was joined by delegates from the Taiwan Statebuilding Party and the Taiwan Solidarity
An SOS message in a bottle has been found in Ireland that is believed to have come from the Taiwanese captain of fishing vessel Yong Yu Sing No. 18 (永裕興18號), who has been missing without a trace for over four years, along with nine Indonesian crew members. The vessel, registered to Suao (蘇澳), went missing near Hawaii on Dec. 30, 2020. The ship has since been recovered, but the 10 crew members have never been found. The captain, surnamed Lee (李), is believed to have signed the note with his name. A post appeared on Reddit on Tuesday after a man
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked