The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday lambasted Chinese players at the World Cyber Games in Seattle for roughing up Taiwanese contestants, saying that violence could only increase Taiwan's aversion toward Beijing.
Phoebe Yeh (葉非比), acting deputy director-general of the ministry's Department of Information and Cultural Affairs, said China's suppression of Taiwan had reached an "eccentric" level, with the international community witnessing the profanity and violence of Chinese players at the event.
She cautioned Taiwanese to remain alert when encountering Chinese competitors at international events.
Players are advised to contact the ministry's representative offices for assistance, she said.
Yeh said that Taiwanese player Liu You-chen (劉祐辰) won the bronze medal in the grand final of Project Gotham Racing 3 and displayed the Republic of China (ROC) flag during the award ceremony.
More than 10 Chinese gamers and Chinese media employees scrambled toward the stage to grab the flag,the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) reported.
After the ceremony, Chinese players confronted the Taiwanese contestants, requesting that they surrender Liu and calling Taiwanese players "sons of bitches," the report said.
The report said that Chinese players struck at the Taiwanese and tried to prevent them from taking their vehicle back to their hotel. Seattle police were called in to maintain order while the ministry's representative office in Seattle sent personnel to provide assistance.
The organizer dispatched a vehicle to transport the Taiwanese players back to their hotel, the report said.
Meanwhile, a pro-independence group yesterday called on Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to speak up and defend the ROC in light of the incident.
The Southern Taiwan Society issued a statement calling on KMT politicians, including Ma, to show their loyalty to the ROC.
While the KMT claimed loyalty to the "national flag," the statement said that it did not have the courage to stand up to China when it humiliates the nation, the society said.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus yesterday demanded an apology from Chinese President Hu Jintao (
"They [the Chinese participants] cursed our boys and called them `sons of bitches' because they were holding our national flag. Is that the way for the Chinese government to treat Taiwanese people while they continue saying they want to unite with us?" DPP Legislator Wang Sing-nan (
Wang Sing-nan and DPP Legislator Wang Tuoh (王拓) held a press conference at the caucus' office yesterday morning.
Wang Tuoh said they had not intended to respond to the incident, but they decided to do something after the caucus office phone lines were flooded with angry callers.
They invited lawmakers from the KMT and People First Party to join their condemnation of the Chinese government.
"This is a great chance for them to fight with us on the same issue," Wang Tuoh said.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
RSS