China is the main cause of problems relating to preserving peace in the Asia-Pacific region and deserves extra attention from countries in the area, a peace promotion group said yesterday.
"Before the 1990s, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, dubbed `Asia's Four Dragons,' dedicated themselves to economic development," said Koo Kuan-min (
Peace is not like chanting sutras, Koo said, meaning it does not come easily.
"If we want peace, we have to be ready to pay a price for it," he said.
Koo made the remarks at a press conference held yesterday to announce a two-day forum organized by his foundation to be held tomorrow and Sunday. The event, entitled "2006 Asia-Pacific Peace Observation," will publicize studies on the peace and security situation in Northeast Asia, the Taiwan Strait, Southeast Asia, South Asia and the South Pacific.
Koo said that peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region is the foundation of regional prosperity and development in the region, and has significant impact on cross-strait stability.
It is important to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait, Koo said, because it is important to the peace and security of the region.
Facing China's military expansion and its potential threat to regional safety, Taiwan must not keep quiet about the effort it puts in to maintain cross-strait peace and should make known its position on regional peace, he said.
Liu Fu-kuo (劉復國), from the Institute of International Relations of the National Chengchi University, said the most serious security problem in the region lies in Northeast Asia, where Japan, China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea and the US are competing for domination.
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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