Members of “third-force” political parties yesterday gathered in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei to protest the meeting between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore, saying that Ma has damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty by acknowledging the “one China” principle.
New Power Party (NPP) legislative candidate Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said: “All the Ma-Xi meeting achieved was having Ma’s lies exposed. The underlying message of the [so-called] ‘1992 consensus’ has always been the ‘one China’ principle, and there is no room for different interpretations.”
The “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted to making up in 2000, refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
Photo: AFP
Huang said the NPP would not admit or agree to the “1992 consensus,” which he described as a fiction fabricated by politicians, but imposed on Taiwanese at the expense of the nation’s development and stability.
He also criticized legislators for failing to supervise the president, adding that the Legislative Yuan has become nothing more than a rubber stamp for Ma.
The legislature must be restructured and the KMT overthrown to establish a democratic mechanism to normalize the cross-strait relationship and its development, he said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Green Party-Social Democratic Party alliance legislative candidate Lee Ken-cheng (李根政) said that Ma stressed the “one China” principle of the “1992 consensus” without mentioning the “different interpretations” component, which was in line with the “one China” principle upheld by the CCP, making Taiwan an appendage to China and betraying the Taiwanese public’s trust.
He said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has failed in its role as the largest opposition party, as it should have exercised all of its available legal measures, such as calling for Ma’s impeachment, a constitutional interpretation or mobilizing protesters against the Ma-Xi meeting.
The alliance called on opposition parties to clarify their China policies and protest the Ma administration’s “opaque dealings.”
Photo: Tsai Wen-chu, Taipei Times
Saying that Ma refashioned the “1992 consensus” as the “one China” principle, Taiwan Solidarity Union Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said that Ma did not have a mandate from the public, and Taiwanese would not acknowledge anything he said at the meeting.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching