Japan's foreign minister yesterday defended his assertion that Japanese colonial rule benefited Taiwan, saying his comments were taken out of context.
Foreign Minister Taro Aso reportedly said on Saturday that Taiwan has high educational levels thanks to Japanese improvements in literacy during the 1895-1945 colonial era, prompting protests from Beijing and Taipei.
Aso expressed regret for the comments in parliament yesterday, but said his words were taken out of context.
"I was only quoting a story I was told by a highly respected Taiwanese official who said Japan had contributed a great deal in spreading compulsory education," Aso told a Japanese parliamentary committee.
"When it was translated into Chinese it was distorted further and they got very upset," he continued, adding that the furor was his own fault and that he regretted it.
The comments set off a string of protests. China yesterday accused Aso of glorifying Tokyo's imperialist era, and Taiwan's deputy educational minister Lu Mu-lin (
The comments touched a raw nerve in Asia, where many feel that Japan has not fully atoned for its military conquests in East Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
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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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching