Former Chinese citizen Zhou Shuguang (周曙光), who yesterday applied for a Republic of China (ROC) passport after becoming a naturalized citizen and obtaining an ROC identification card on Thursday, has expressed an interest in running for public office so that he can experience democracy in action.
The journalist, who achieved international fame after exposing Beijing injustices on his blog, yesterday said that he appreciates, but does not shy away from, the symbolism of requesting an ROC passport on the 29th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Zhou, also known as Zoula (佐拉), became qualified to obtain ROC citizenship after residing in Hualien’s Rueisui Township (瑞穗) with his Taiwanese wife for the past seven years.
Photo: Wang Chun-chi, Taipei Times
An information technology engineer by profession, Zhou was born in 1981 in China’s Hunan Province, and gained renown as an independent journalist when he used his blog as a platform to publish stories on Beijing’s land appropriations, suppression of freedom of speech and oppression of ethnic minorities.
In 2008, he covered unrest in Tibet, riots in Guizhou and a politically motivated knife attack in Shanghai, for which he was arrested and detained without charges.
Zhou said that his activism attracted the attention of the Chinese government, and that he was frequently ordered by the security services to present himself at their offices for questioning.
“They often asked me where I had gone, whom I had seen and why I had seen them. My life was being monitored and they had even cut my telephone line,” he said yesterday. “During the Olympics, I was put under house arrest to prevent me from going out or reporting on anything.”
In 2009, he was prevented by the police from organizing a conference in Beijing on the anniversary of the massacre, Zhou said, adding that they expelled him from the city and barred him from attending any events related to the massacre.
He took a photograph of the Great Wall of China and posted it online — it became a symbol of defiance to state censorship, he said.
Observing Taiwanese politics since his immigration, Zhou has found the elitism of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to resemble that of the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
The Democratic Progressive Party, which originally branded itself as being close to the people, has become less daring since becoming the ruling party, he added.
After being a Taiwanese resident for 10 years — an eligibility requirement for public office — he would like to run for borough warden, Zhou said.
“It would be interesting to experience Taiwanese democracy as a political candidate,” he said.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS