The invitations issued to opposition party leaders and retired generals to attend China's "Taiwan Retrocession Day" were the latest part of China's "united front" strategy and a blatant attempt to swallow up Taiwan, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said yesterday.
The president made the remarks while receiving foreign guests who are participating in talks hosted by the Taiwan Thinktank on US-Japan-Taiwan relations.
Chen told his guests that the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) attempt to equate the "retrocession" of Taiwan after World War II with its return to China was nonsensical.
"It was political dogma rather than historical truth," Chen said.
Retrocession Day marks Oct. 25, 1945, the day Japan ended its rule over Taiwan.
Chen stressed that the Taiwanese had passively accepted two crucial events in the last hundred or so years: cession to Japan in 1895 and "retrocession" in 1945.
"The real meaning of `retrocession' is Taiwanese having the freedom to rule their own country," he said.
The motive for China's high-profile celebrations of the day this year deserved scrutiny because Beijing had not commemorated it ever before, he said.
"Sadly, today in Taiwan, many people are misusing the concept of Taiwan's retrocession to wrongly promote cross-strait peace. The proposed cross-strait peace advancement bill [兩岸和平促進法] would eventually result in Taiwan surrendering to China," Chen said.
also see story:
Editorial: An odd event across the Strait
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods