Through the collective efforts of its people, Taiwan has created great economic miracles that have won the acclaim of the world community. Nevertheless, what lies beneath this brilliant economic performance are many institutional and structural imbalances. Various social-movement groups, including those formed by farmers, laborers, women, indigenous peoples and environmentalists, have made repeated appeals for reforms, demanding that the government uphold fairness and social justice as it pursues economic growth. These appeals for reforms not only ignited the Taiwanese people's strong desire to strive for the betterment of our society, they constituted one of the major causes that eventually led to the first transfer of power between political parties in Taiwan in 2000.
We may say that the new government formed in 2000 was born to carry out reforms and that it exists to realize fairness and social justice. These missions represent the most solemn mandate from the 23 million people of Taiwan, and they embody the true meaning of the historic transfer of power between political parties.
However, shortly after we completed the first-ever transfer of power between political parties in Taiwan's history, the bursting of the Internet bubble, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the ensuing anti-terrorism struggles and the US-led War in Iraq all precipitated a serious recession in the world economy. Owing to these factors, Taiwan also saw its first negative economic growth since the end of World War II. Meanwhile, with its unemployment rate on the rise and the health of its financial system rapidly declining, Taiwan could have suffered domestic financial crises at any time.
In this precarious environment, the government set "economic revitalization" and "comprehensive reform" as its paramount tasks. With these objectives in mind, the government pushed for deregulation of various economic and trade sectors, actively pursued revitalization of the economy and created more job opportunities, so as to improve the well-being of the unemployed population. The tasks to accomplish "economic revitalization" and "comprehensive reform" are meant to create win-win situations for employees, employers and the government. They are not, as alleged by some, government policies that lean toward the business community or big corporations.
We pursue economic prosperity in order to enhance the people's quality of life. Wealthy people living in a poor country cannot retain their fortune for long, whereas a wealthy society that turns its back on the continual existence of poor people is by no means a fair and just society.
With the gradual revitalization of the economy and the continuous lowering of the unemployment rate, the government shall adjust its priorities step by step.
It has been five years since the completion of the first-ever transfer of power between political parties. However, many problems inherited from the past authoritarian regime -- under which a single party's control deeply entrenched the government's operations -- have yet to be completely resolved. These problems include, but are not limited to: the handling of inappropriately acquired assets by political parties and the all-out elimination of the influence of political party, government and the military in the media.
Although the executive branch has sent relevant bill proposals to the Legislative Yuan for review, to date, these proposed bills have never been put to discussion or deliberation. In its recent internal power reshuffle, the political party responsible has resisted calls for reformed conduct and ignored the public's appeal for the return of seized property to the Taiwanese people. The political party responsible for inappropriately seizing the nation's assets not only has refused to comply with the public's expectations, but has instead rushed to sell off these properties at a low price.
Their actions provide a glaring confirmation of their lack of sincerity in acknowledging and making amends for their past mistakes. The handling of assets inappropriately acquired by political parties has set the stage for competition between those who advocate reforms and those who oppose them. I want to hereby solemnly proclaim our commitment to employ all possible means to return to the people of Taiwan and our country the properties that have been seized inappropriately by political parties, because these properties are not a single party's assets. And the transfer of their ownership does not automatically legalize the possession of these properties.
Over the past five years, my administration has never wavered in our commitment to implement reforms. To this end, we have shown neither hesitation nor reservation in carrying out our resolve. However, the political reality confronting a minority government -- which does not represent the majority in the Legislative Yuan -- ? continues to hamper the implementation of various reform measures, undercutting the efficacy of these reforms. The current state of affairs with regard to reforms has exposed the deficiencies in our constitutional system; deficiencies that constitute the greatest resistance and impediment to our reform initiatives. Our current constitutional system is one that does not provide a mechanism to deal effectively with political stalemate, and one that has rendered our nation and our government idle in a state of incessant quibbling. In order to strengthen good governance practices and to upgrade our nation's overall competitiveness, we must continue to make headway in comprehensive constitutional reforms.
With the first phase of the constitutional reengineering project completed on June 7, the right to hold referendum has been incorporated in the statutes governing the procedures for constitutional amendments. Henceforth, all future constitutional re-engineering projects will be carried out by adopting a "bottom-up and outside-in" approach; that is, relevant proposals will be first initiated by social groups before political parties are involved. Social groups may even take the lead in the constitutional reform processes with the government playing a mere supporting role and helping to map out the procedures and channels for popular participation, as well as encouraging extensive discussions on constitutional reforms among people from all walks of life. Finally, through deliberative democracy, we hope to step-by-step assemble a concrete constitutional reform plan, which will be proposed and put to vote in the Legislative Yuan, with its final ratification approved by the people of Taiwan through referendum.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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