In his youth, Mao Zedong (?翾A東) was said to once recite a poem while swimming across the Xiangjiang (?eth>|? River: "Confident of a 200-year human life, I will swim across 3,000 li." It was fine for the youthful Mao to believe he would live to the age of 200, given his love for raving. But still bloated with confidence in his old age, Mao led China to one of its biggest disasters in history -- the Cultural Revolution.
This time, Jiang Zemin (
It is fine to dream and rave, as long as one does not take it seriously and it causes no harm. But words can create a major catastrophe if taken seriously, especially if spoken by someone who has power.
Mao never realized that his "confidence in a 200-year human life" was an impossible dream. Likewise, "unification" or "restoration of the nation" has been the dream of those in power after the political split across the Taiwan Strait since 1949. Since the establishment of the PRC, Mao, Zhou Enlai (
But dreams are just that. If people are forced to see the dream of unification come true, there can only be disaster.
Perhaps Jiang's dream of "unification within 50 years" should also be seen in this light. Jiang is China's third-generation core leader. Will the leaders 50 years from now have their own dreams? Jiang must never repeat Mao's big mistake.
Hu Wen-huei is the Deputy Editor in Chief of the Liberty Times.
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
RSS