Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials yesterday advised president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) against restoring names the DPP government had abolished.
The DPP government had changed the name of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall and replaced the inscription dazhong zhizheng (
"Illegally changing the name of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall was ill-mannered and was, of course, invalid," Ma was quoted as saying in an interview with the Chinese-language China Times published yesterday.
The name-change lacked legitimacy because the DPP government amended the Organic Statute of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂組織條例) despite opposition, Ma said in the interview, adding that he would restore the names after soliciting opinions from different groups.
Ma added that he would not make the change if the public supports the new names.
Cabinet Secretary-General Chen Chin-jun (
"Replacing the inscription of dazhong zhizheng with Liberty Square was a collective consensus," he said. "The new government should keep this in mind and refrain from causing unnecessary ethnic conflicts and creating an unnecessary authoritarian symbol."
"There is no room for doubt that the DPP government had followed the law in changing the names. The names were changed after all legal procedures were completed," he said.
Meanwhile, Vice President Annette Lu (
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
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