Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) on Saturday said that his intent to run for president was motivated by the poor state of cross-strait relations.
Wang made the remarks during a speech to supporters at a reunion at National Tainan First Senior High School, where he said that he “would not run in an election at my age if Taiwan did not need help.”
After beating around the bush for months, Wang, 77, on Wednesday last week said that he would launch a presidential bid next month.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
On Saturday, Wang, who was the legislative speaker from 1999 to 2016, staunchly rejected criticism that he is secretly a pan-green supporter.
Wang said he is “for the KMT and for Taiwan,” and even though he is Taiwanese, he could not reject his ethnic-Chinese “soul.”
“The current state of cross-strait relations is not peaceful. It is nothing like during [former president] Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, when we had cooperative exchanges and room for discourse,” he said.
Pressure from China to unify is mounting, but neither unification nor official independence can easily be achieved, Wang said, adding that peace could not be maintained without President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) acknowledging the “1992 consensus.”
The “1992 consensus” — a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted making up in 2000 — refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party that both sides acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
The lack of exchanges between Taiwan and China has harmed the public, Wang said, adding that it is his urgent public duty to mend and rebuild the cross-strait relationship.
The “1992 consensus” is just a phrase, but it gives China “face” and gives Taiwan “ambiguous space” to maneuver, he said.
The Democratic Progressive Party’s policies are making Taiwan’s path ever narrower and the US is only acting for its own benefit with regard to Taiwan, he said.
If cross-strait relations were good, the US would not be “so demanding” and Taiwan would have more space to assert its own position, he added.
“Taiwan would not need to do as the US wishes,” he said.
He said he aims to present five demands regarding Taiwan to China “if the two sides agree,” but he would not present the demands in front of the media until there is an agreement “to avoid lots of people giving their views.”
Wang said he had not decided whether he would visit the US to discuss his view.
Such a trip is not a must, as the US regularly sends people to Taiwan to exchange views with him, he said.
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