President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday reiterated that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government was the vanguard during China’s War of Resistance against Japan, while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) served as an assisting force.
Ma was attending a meeting of representatives of the Veterans Association of the Republic of China, which was held to celebrate its 27th anniversary and the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Quoting a speech by former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) when Beijing celebrated the 60th anniversary of the victory, Ma said: “The KMT government initiated battles at the front line, and the Communist Party took charge of the rear,” saying that the remark was only half correct, since most attacks were initiated by the Nationalist government, while the CCP only participated in a few of them.
Ma said that upon learning that a new Chinese film, Cairo Declaration (開羅宣言), showed former CCP chairman Mao Zedong (毛澤東) playing a key role in the Cairo meeting, he said: “This is a big joke,” because Mao never attended the summit.
It is important for people to know that the KMT government initiated most of the battles during the war, the president said, adding that people should show humility when dealing with historical facts.
Cairo Declaration has drawn criticism and ridicule on social media since the release of the movie trailer and promotional posters attempting to put Mao at the center of a World War II summit that he never attended.
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