Following the summit between the leaders of North and South Korea, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday said that he would not sacrifice the interests of the Taiwanese people by accepting Beijing's terms in exchange for a hand-shake with his Chinese counterpart and a Nobel peace prize.
Chen said that he does not need to go on a pilgrimage to China because there are many hands in Taiwan he needs to shake. Nor does he need a Nobel peace prize because peace in the Taiwan Strait is more important than such a honor.
"If South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korea's Kim Jong-il can, so can Chen Shui-bian," he said.
"Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (
Chen said he was not prepared to accept Beijing's "one China" policy and theory of unification because they run counter to his beliefs. Nor does he think a majority of Taiwanese would want to see him to do that, he said.
As national leader, Chen said, he cannot be so selfish and greedy to think only about his own interests because his most important mission is to protect Taiwan or else he would be judged by history as a wrongdoer.
Chen made the remarks in a speech to members of District 3490 of the Rotary International Taiwan at the Ambassador Hotel in Taipei yesterday morning.
Chen said that there is no such thing as "one China with each side's individual interpretations" and the so-called "1992 consensus" does not exist.
They are lies cooked up by the former KMT regime to deceive the people of Taiwan and the international community, Chen said.
The "cross-strait common market" proposed by former premier and KMT vice presidential candidate Vincent Siew (
Taiwan will surrender to the authoritarian regime if the government accepts the precondition that Taiwan is part of China, he said.
Chen said that making money is important, but national sovereignty and security must be upheld in addition to the dignity and interests of the nation.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
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A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
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