Vice President Annette Lu (
Twelve countries have female leaders, nine have female defense ministers and 13 have female vice presidents, Lu said, adding that "there is a clear trend toward women running for positions of leadership in national governments" and that it was a "vital stage in the development of human civilization."
Lu called on the public to take women more seriously and said that "any Republic of China national over 40 years old is eligible to run in the presidential election."
Lu made the remarks during a question-and-answer session at the presentation of a new book on the vice president yesterday.
The author of the book, Ryu Min-joo, was invited by Lu to the ceremony held at the Taipei Guest House to talk about her new novel, which is based on Lu's life story.
Entitled Daughter of the World, the book was released in July and its Chinese translation hit the shelves yesterday.
The publisher is planning to translate the book into Japanese and English. The publisher also hopes to see the book turned into a movie.
Ryu is the author of the Korean blockbuster TV epic drama Jewel in the Palace (
Lu said that she respected the media's political interpretation of the timing of the book's release, but insisted that the book had nothing to do with the presidential election.
Declining to answer whether she would run in the 2008 presidential election, the vice president said she did not pick the title of the book nor did she decide the timing of the book's release.
Lu was trying to deny any parallel with the book written about President Chen Shui-bian (
The vice president also took the opportunity to respond to a controversial comment made recently by former presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming (
Koo said he did not think "someone wearing a skirt" would make a good commander-in-chief.
Lu said that "those wearing a skirt do not like wars," adding that "men started 99.9 percent of wars."
The vice president said she would like to thank Koo's "good intentions" in making such a comment because he helped rekindle the debate on neo-feminism, adding that she did not think Koo's comment was aimed at her.
While history is about "his" story, Lu said she would like to see men and women write "his story" and "her story" together.
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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