An article by former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in the latest issue of a Japanese magazine slammed President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) actions commemorating the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) as a contradiction of historical fact.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) was quick to condemn Lee and called on the public to denounce him.
The Chinese-language United Daily Evening News said that in the article in the Voice magazine, Lee said the Taiwanese “fought for their motherland as Japanese.”
Seventy years ago, “Taiwan and Japan were one nation. As long as they were the same nation, it is certainly not true [for Ma] to say that Taiwan fought in the resistance war against Japan,” the newspaper quoted Lee as saying.
Ma’s commemoration of the resistance war against Japan was simply an attempt to curry favor with Beijing, Lee said.
“The Taiwanese during that period were undoubtedly Japanese; they fought for their mother country,” Lee said, adding that Ma’s recent actions could be seen as deliberate harassment of Japan, which would nevertheless not change Beijing’s attitude toward Ma.
Beijing is aware that Ma has become the most unpopular president in Taiwan’s history, with an approval rate of 9 percent at one time, Lee added.
According to the newspaper report, Lee also criticized what he said was the the acceleration of the Ma administration’s reliance on China, which he said had been based on the “a counterfeit product” of the so-called “1992 consensus.”
The “1992 consensus” refers to a supposed understanding reached during cross-strait talks in 1992 that both Taiwan and China acknowledge that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.
The 1992 meeting did not reach a consensus over “one China, respective interpretations,” Lee said, adding that the “1992 consensus” was a term former Mainland Affairs Council minister Su Chi (蘇起) has acknowledged making up.
Hung released a statement condemning Lee soon after the newspaper report came out yesterday evening, saying that she became “hot under the collar” when she heard the news.
She called on “all of society” to undertake both “oral and written denunciations” against Lee.
“Lee was the president of the Republic of China for 12 years. It is unthinkable that he could have made those humiliating remarks. No wonder he is known as Masao Iwasato [his Japanese name]; he is Japanese,” Hung said.
“No wonder I proposed that the party [KMT] expel Lee, as he is a disloyal and heartless person without any virtue,” Hung said.
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