President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday called on allies to help defend Taiwan’s sovereignty, accusing China of waging a “deliberate campaign” to undermine the nation’s democracy by refusing to talk to her government.
Tsai’s comments capped a week of escalating rhetoric between the two sides of the Strait, sparked by a speech from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday.
Xi, who described Taiwan’s unification with China as “inevitable” and reiterated Beijing’s willingness to use force if necessary, called for unification under the “one country, two systems” formula and defined the so-called “1992 consensus” as being based on the “one China” principle.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The “1992 consensus” is a term that former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted making up in 2000.
Saying that the term “1992 consensus” no longer has room for ambiguity, as Beijing has redefined it as “one country, two systems,” Tsai yesterday called on all political parties in Taiwan to stop using the term “1992 consensus” and to “clearly speak out our rejection of the ‘one country, two systems’ formula.”
Tsai also hit out at Beijing’s willingness to bypass her elected government as “a continuation of its deliberate campaign to undermine and subvert our democratic process and create division in our society.”
“At a time when we are exhausting efforts to avoid provocation and miscommunication, China’s actions are unhelpful and contrary to democratic practices,” she said in a briefing with foreign media yesterday.
China’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric toward Taiwan was a test of whether democratic allies would protect each other, Tsai said.
“If the international community fails to speak up for and assist Taiwan under the circumstances we face today, I have to ask which country will be next,” she added.
The “one country, two systems” model was implemented in Hong Kong after Britain handed it back to China as a way to guarantee the kind of liberties and government unseen in authoritarian China.
Sliding freedoms in Hong Kong have done little to endear the idea of a similar deal to Taiwanese.
Tsai said it would be impossible for her government or any Taiwanese politician to accept Xi’s recent remarks “without betraying the trust and will of the people of Taiwan.”
In response, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spokesman Ouyang Lung (歐陽龍) said it would be impossible for the party to abandon the “1992 consensus,” as the term is a “historical truth.”
Reiterating the KMT’s version of the “consensus” — that both sides of the Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” but with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means — Ouyang said Xi’s combining the “consensus” with “one country, two systems” is wrong.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiao-kuan
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
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
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