Responding to a series of recent protests targeting statues of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) yesterday said there would not have been a 228 Incident and, therefore, a chance for those pretending to be family members of victims to “feign tears” if it were not for Chiang.
Chiang statues have been defaced by graffiti, egg-throwing and even head-chopping over the past few days. Although such acts have occurred for years, they have apparently intensified over the week that culminated with the 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday on Saturday.
Tsai, who just survived a recall vote on Feb. 14, posted a note on Facebook titled: “The historical paradox concerning Chiang Kai-shek.”
“It seems that Feb. 28 is a day on which a bunch of people show their hatred against Chiang, whose statues have been graffitied and disposed of,” Tsai said. “But the paradoxical historical truth is that, if Taiwan had not been influenced by Chiang Kai-shek, there would not be a chance to even mention the 228 Incident.”
Without Chiang, Taiwan would have been part of the People’s Republic of China, and “‘one country, two systems’ would have been a non-starter,” Tsai said.
He then listed figures and events that “would not have occured,” including former presidents Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), the KMT, the Democratic Progressive Party, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the Sunflower movement. Those would have been replaced by Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Great Leap Forward, the Great Hunger, the Cultural Revolution and its Red Guards, and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) Chinese Dream, he added.
Had Chiang Kai-shek and his forces been annihilated by Mao, “whether the family members of the real 228 Massacre victims would have the chance to emerge would be a mystery, but what is certain is that the family members of fake 228 Incident victims would definitely not have had the chance to feign their tears as they did [on Saturday].”
Many have speculated that Tsai was referring to Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who wiped away tears several times when talking about his grandfather, a victim of the incident, during an emotional speech at a memorial ceremony on Saturday.
Upon hearing about Tsai’s remarks, Ko said that people should not further provoke each other.
Meanwhile, the KMT Zhongshan-Datong district office slammed Ko’s apparent refusal to shake hands with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) at the 228 ceremony as impolite on Facebook yesterday morning, but deleted the post hours later.
“For what reason did Ko refuse to shake hands with Ma twice while asking people to let go of hatred?” the office said. “Or is he going to again attribute [the impoliteness] to Asperger’s?”
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods