Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended a national flag-raising ceremony in Greater Tainan to celebrate the Republic of China’s (ROC) centennial.
At the start of the ceremony, Tsai and Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) joined other early risers in the singing of the ROC national anthem, backed by recorded music.
A number of legislators from both the pan-green and pan-blue camps attended the event.
Photo Tsai Wen-chu, Taipei Times
The DPP presidential candidate’s presence at a national flag-raising ceremony came two days after she unexpectedly declared at a campaign rally in Greater Kaohsiung that “Taiwan is the ROC, the ROC is Taiwan, the ROC government today is the government of Taiwan.”
The statement was interpreted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as a departure from the DPP’s previous stance that the ROC government was a -government in exile.
Addressing the ceremony, Lai said it was usually a heartening moment to see the ROC national flag at an international competition or conference.
Photo: Chang Jui-chen, Taipei Times
“We tend to be touched and even moved to tears whenever we see our national flag flying at international events,” Lai said, adding that he believed the national flag-raising ceremony would help foster national unity.
Lai, a DPP stalwart, said he was pleased to see a national flag-raising ceremony being held in Greater Tainan, a traditional DPP stronghold, with the attendance of people of different political persuasions.
“We hope the event will help promote inclusiveness and national development in the years ahead,” he said.
Tsai, who did not make a speech at the ceremony, told reporters afterwards the ROC government could be accommodated and that she hoped the KMT would more closely identify with Taiwan.
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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