The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday rejected Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) call for Taiwan to accept its “one country, two systems” formula, saying it shows a blatant disregard for the fact that Taiwan is a democratic nation.
The ministry issued the statement in response to Xi’s speech earlier yesterday, in which he said unification under a “one country, two systems” model would “safeguard the interests and well-being of Taiwanese compatriots.”
Xi is trampling on the right of Taiwanese to determine their future and their staunch refusal to accept Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework, it said.
The Taiwanese public has seen Chinese limitations of freedom of speech and press, as well as Beijing’s oppression of Islam, Buddhism and Catholicism, it added.
As Taiwan has witnessed the conditions in Hong Kong — the “poster child” of the “one country, two systems” formula — and the Chinese government’s failure to care for its own people, guarantee its own citizens basic human rights or allow public participation in politics, Taiwanese must doubt China’s sincerity, the ministry said.
As a mature democracy, Taiwan has long been an active, contributing member of the international community, it said.
Through continued international cooperation, participation in non-governmental organizations and a willingness to offer humanitarian assistance, Taiwan has demonstrated that it values positive attitudes, pragmatism and sincerity, it said.
The ministry called on other nations to continue to support Taiwan’s democracy and sovereignty, and to witness how China is trying to limit Taiwanese’s participation in normal international activities.
It also called on the global community to see that Taiwan is a mature democracy that is not ruled by China, saying that the international community should work with Taiwan to build a world order based on freedom, democracy and human rights.
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