Wang Dan (王丹), an exiled student leader of the Tiananmen democracy protest of 1989, has published an opinion piece in the New York Times supporting the desire of Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), a blind human rights activist, to leave China.
In the article, titled “Mr. Chen, Welcome to America,” Wang said that based on his own experience, being an exile has only helped him in his fight for greater political freedoms and human rights in China.
Wang, who was arrested and jailed twice by Chinese authorities, said he did not regret his decision to leave for the US in 1998.
Wang said he understands and respects the reasons that might make Chen hesitant to leave, noting that perhaps Chen thinks he will no longer be able to take part in China’s struggle for civil rights, or that his influence will diminish if he lives abroad.
“But if he feels that way, he is too pessimistic,” Wang wrote. “I’ve been in exile for 14 years and have learned that there are many ways to exert influence in China from abroad.”
“I’ve studied at Harvard, I teach at universities in Taiwan and the United States and I continue to publish regularly about current events in China. My work circulates and is read extensively in China via the Internet and social media. I have tens of thousands of followers on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter,” he wrote.
“The Internet and globalization have changed the very concept of exile. They have eliminated the possibility of isolating Los Angeles [where I now live] from Beijing [my hometown] and Shandong Province [where Mr. Chen is from],” Wang wrote.
Chen is currently undergoing medical treatment at a Beijing hospital for a broken ankle after staying at the US embassy in Beijing for six days following his dramatic escape from illegal house arrest.
Under a deal announced between China and the US on Wednesday, Chen originally planned to study in Tianjin, China, but later changed his mind and said he wanted to go to the US with his family for a short while.
New York University has invited him to be a visiting scholar.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift