On April 21, Chinese Unity Promotion Party (CUPP) founder Chang An-le (張安樂), also known as the White Wolf, gave a talk as part of a lecture on “Contemporary Taiwanese political development” at National Sun Yat-sen University’s Si Wan College. He was invited by assistant professor Chen Shih-yueh (陳世岳).
After the lecture, university authorities immediately issued a statement that Chen had “brought the academic profession into disrepute” and “abused the university’s pedagogical freedoms,” and issued a public apology.
Some observers have accused the school of encroaching upon the freedoms of its teaching staff, and that its stance runs counter to the goal of university education to expose students to a diverse range of opinions, values and ideas. I disagree.
The dispute does not concern the CUPP’s support for unification with China, nor is it because Chang was a former Bamboo Union gang leader. Instead, the controversy centers around the fundamental nature of the CUPP.
Debate over whether advocation of unification with China should fall within the bounds of freedom of speech is nothing new. Many local political parties support such a stance, including the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the New Party and the Labor Party. Almost all pro-unification parties are accomplices to Beijing’s “united front” strategy in Taiwan, and the CUPP is no exception.
A Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proxies bill is working its way through the legislative review process, but whether it should be legal for parties “openly colluding with a foreign hostile adversary and assisting the enemy with infiltration, organization and other activities within the nation’s borders” is beyond the scope of this article.
However, although the aforementioned parties support unification, none of them operate like the CUPP, which receives financial support from the CCP to carry out infiltration and united front work in Taiwan.
The CUPP unscrupulously employs violence against people whose positions conflict with the party’s aims, including Hong Kong dissidents living in Taiwan and Falun Gong practitioners.
In one notorious incident in 2017, Hu Ta-kang (胡大剛) and other CUPP members used metal rods to attack students and protesters outside the “Sing! China: Shanghai-Taipei Music Festival at National Taiwan University.
Although the CUPP is legally registered, with its track record of using violence, funding from the CCP and threats that endanger national security, it can never be integrated into a democratic society and is an abnormal political organization.
It goes without saying that the protection of free speech should include the right to call for unification. However, free speech and academic freedom should not be distorted to give criminal organizations a mouthpiece to preach violence, and promoting violence is not part of the diverse values that universities should be seeking to foster on campus.
Where to set the limits and boundaries of free speech is a question that Taiwanese society can no longer afford to duck.
Alex Huang is a postgraduate student at National Sun Yat-sen University.
Translated by Edward Jones
What began on Feb. 28 as a military campaign against Iran quickly became the largest energy-supply disruption in modern times. Unlike the oil crises of the 1970s, which stemmed from producer-led embargoes, US President Donald Trump is the first leader in modern history to trigger a cascading global energy crisis through direct military action. In the process, Trump has also laid bare Taiwan’s strategic and economic fragilities, offering Beijing a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them. Repairing the damage to Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure could take years, suggesting that elevated energy prices are likely to persist. But the most
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
The Legislative Yuan on Friday held another cross-party caucus negotiation on a special act for bolstering national defense that the Executive Yuan had proposed last year. The party caucuses failed to reach a consensus on several key provisions, so the next session is scheduled for today, where many believe substantial progress would finally be made. The plan for an eight-year NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.59 billion) special defense budget was first proposed by the Cabinet in November last year, but the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers have continuously blocked it from being listed on the agenda for
On Tuesday last week, the Presidential Office announced, less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to depart, that President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned official trip to Eswatini, Taiwan’s sole diplomatic ally in Africa, had been delayed. It said that the three island nations of Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar had, without prior notice, revoked the charter plane’s overflight permits following “intense pressure” from China. Lai, in his capacity as the Republic of China’s (ROC) president, was to attend the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession. King Mswati visited Taiwan to attend Lai’s inauguration in 2024. This is the first
RSS