A China-based Taiwanese businesswoman raised controversy with her suggestion to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) that, to ensure Taiwan’s future, he should disregard other voices in Taiwan, and just focus on further cooperation between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
British-registered Tung’s Co president Susan Tung (董淑貞) was recorded in a video clip making the remarks during a closed-door forum in Shanghai on Sunday held between Chu and China-based Taiwanese businesspeople.
Tung said that there were over 350,000 marriages in China between Taiwanese businessmen and Chinese women, adding that if each couple gave birth to two children and invited the husband’s parents to live in China, “there would easily be 1 million people returning to Taiwan to vote. With this kind of backing, how could the KMT not win the elections?”
Now is the time to further cooperation between the KMT and the CCP and initiate political talks instead of talking of the “23 million people of Taiwan,” she added.
At the same forum, Taiwan Business Association in Shanghai director Yeh Hui-te (葉惠德) slammed last year’s Sunflower movement, saying it has caused significant damage to Taiwanese businesses overseas.
In Taipei, Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Liu Yao-jen (劉耀仁) posted a video clip of Tung making the comments on Facebook, writing that he had obtained it from one of his friends who also attended the Sunday meeting.
“I really wanted to slap her a couple times,” Liu quoted his friend as saying, adding that it was because of these “pathetic Taiwanese businesspeople” that the CCP looks down on Taiwan.
China-based Taiwanese businesspeople enjoy medical care through the National Health Insurance (NHI) system as well as being eligible for the Labor Pension Fund, but comments such as Tung’s about the Sunflower movement show they do not care about the benefits they gain from Taiwan, Liu said, adding that these types of remarks bring to mind China’s “united front” rhetoric.
“If they love China so much, these businesspeople should drop all such benefits and stay in China,” Liu said.
Taiwanese netizens also criticized Tung’s comments along the same lines, calling for Tung to remain in China if she has no need of Taiwan’s NHI and medical coverage.
Taiwan Business Association in Shanghai officials said Tung only made her comments toward the end of the meeting, adding that she was simply expressing her support for the KMT and did not mean any harm.
The officials said that Chu had heard Tung’s comments, but made no response.
Tung’s loyalties might be divided by the fact that she is not only a committee member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ subsidized non-governmental organization World League of Freedom and Democracy, but also a director-general in the Chinese Overseas Friendship Association, which is under the jurisdiction of China’s United Front Work Department.
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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