The Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) has reacted with “surprise and indignation” at President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) call for Taiwanese people to refer to China as “mainland China” or “the other side.”
FAPA president Bob Yang (楊英育) said: “To me, this is a throwback to the bad old days of the Civil War between the Chinese Nationalists of [former Republic of China (ROC) leader] Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and the communists of [former Chinese leader] Mao Zedong (毛澤東).”
“The Ma government should realize that the ‘Republic of China’ lost its legitimacy more than 30 years ago, and that the new -reality is that the People’s -Republic of China [PRC] represents China, and that Taiwan is a free and democratic country separate from China,” he added.
Ma made his call at a tea party with leading government and legislative officials on Monday.
Presidential Office Spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said that the use of “mainland” or “the other side” would avoid confusion, adding that: “The declaration was made in accordance with the Republic of China Constitution. Only by doing so can we uphold national sovereignty and protect Taiwan’s dignity.”
However, FAPA — one of the most active of Taiwanese--American groups — does not agree.
“In order for Taiwan to -preserve its democracy, it needs to strengthen its ties with the international community and everyone in the international community refers to Taiwan as ‘Taiwan.’ The time for anachronistic ‘ROC’ fictions is over,” Yang said.
A written statement, distributed by FAPA’s Washington office, said that Ma’s latest suggestion came on the heels of efforts by both the PRC and the Ma administration to lock Taiwan into the “1992 consensus,” which FAPA described as “a fiction conjured up by former Ma government official Su Chi (蘇起), who said that in 1992 the two sides agreed to ‘one China,’ but that each side could have its own interpretation.”
The FAPA statement read: “The problem with this ‘consensus’ is that the PRC never agreed that each side could have its own interpretation, while former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) — who served as president from 1988 through 2000 — has stated that such a consensus never existed in the first place.”
“It would behoove the Ma government to come back to reality and accept that China is China and Taiwan is Taiwan,” Yang said. “Playing his semantic games is detrimental to Taiwan and its future as a free and democratic nation.”
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
RSS