Lee urges public to attend march for arms procurement

Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) yesterday urged the people of Taiwan to participate in a parade to be held on Sept. 25 in Taipei to voice their objection to the opposition parties' boycott of the arms-procurement package and show their resolution to resist an invasion by China.

The event's organizer, the Hand-in-Hand Taiwan Alliance, invited Lee, Examination Yuan President Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) and Northern Taiwan Society chairman Wu Shuh-min (吳樹民) to attend a promotional event for the march yesterday.

Pro-independence campaigners at the event reiterated that it was important to create a new constitution and rectify the country's official name, saying that these two steps are the fundamental keys to solving the problem of Taiwan's national status.

Lee said in his speech that although a tangible armed force is important to Taiwan, intangible psychological defenses are also needed to resist China's psychological war.

He said that the tricks China is using in its campaign to unify with Taiwan are becoming increasingly flexible and diversified, and that the people of Taiwan cannot afford to lower their psychological defenses against China just because Beijing is seemingly offering some benefits.

"China has changed its strategies concerning Taiwan since Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) took up his post. Beijing abandoned former Chinese president Jiang Zemin's (江澤民) strategy of intimidation in favor of making seemingly favorable promises that mask an evil intent," Lee said.

Lowering tuition fees for Taiwanese students, giving away pandas and offering duty-free imports for some kinds of Taiwanese fruit are the bait that China is using to shatter people's psychological defenses, he said.

While the rest of the world was denouncing Beijing's "Anti-Secession" Law, the leaders of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), People First Party and New Party visited China, offering themselves up as pawns to promote Beijing's policies, Lee said.

"The menace China represents to Taiwan will only increase. If we do not speed up the progress of writing a new constitution and rectifying the country's official name, Taiwan's sovereignty and national status will be jeopardized," he said.