The Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation charity set up shop in China yesterday, a sign of the atheist communist government’s growing, but still limited, religious tolerance and part of a drive to win the hearts and minds of Taiwanese.
Tzu Chi opened its China chapter in the form of a bookshop-cum-tea house in the historic eastern city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, a popular investment choice for the Taiwanese companies.
Chinese officials say Tzu Chi is the first overseas nongovernmental organization to receive China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs’ blessing to operate in the country. Normally they have to register with the Commerce Ministry as businesses.
However, it is barred from preaching and cannot raise funds from ordinary Chinese without government approval on an ad hoc basis.
“We will not make it a point to preach when we do charity work [in China], but if people ask me my religion, I will say I’m Buddhist,” foundation spokesman Her Rey-sheng (何日生) said. “We will use compassion to care for every suffering person and enlighten them to use love to help others.”
The opening of Tzu Chi’s China chapter was attended by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
“The two sides of the [Taiwan] Strait need this spiritual bridge ... so that they can live in harmony,” he said.
In what appears to be growing tolerance, museums in Beijing and Shanghai hosted exhibits this year to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit who brought Christianity to China.
The launch of Tzu Chi’s China chapter and the Ricci exhibits are in keeping with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) 17th Communist Party Congress speech in 2007 that “religious figures and followers should play a positive role in promoting economic and social development.”
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