Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday urged people to be more understanding and tolerant about issues raised by history, adding that politicians should not use the past to foment conflict and provoke confrontation.
Tsai made the remarks in response to media requests for comment on the controversy sparked by an interview former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) gave to a Japanese magazine.
Lee is reported to have said that as Taiwan was then a part of Japan, Taiwanese did not fight Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) because at that time, Taiwanese were fighting for Japan, which they viewed as their motherland.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
“Each generation and ethnic group in Taiwan has lived a different history, and therefore their memories, experience and interpretations of the past are not the same,” Tsai said yesterday. “When a nation faces such a situation, we have to maintain an attitude of understanding, so that we can learn from history, instead of using what happened as a tool for manipulating rivalry and social division.”
She said that the nation’s tragedy over the past few centuries has been that Taiwanese have been unable to wrest control of the nation’s destiny.
“Now we are a democratic and free nation, and everyone has the right to choose; therefore it is our shared task to defend our freedom and democracy,” Tsai said. “No one should sabotage our freedom and democracy by stirring up rivalry — I believe the public is mature and is capable of facing the issues that history throws up.”
Photo: CNA
However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) yesterday added to her barrage of attacks on Lee over his comments about Japan, and pressed Tsai to publicly express her stance on the issue.
Responding to Tsai’s remarks that people should view other people’s feelings about their histories with understanding, Hung on Friday night said that she “does not agree with” this kind of statement and questioned whether Tsai would “abandon Lee” if voters began to see a vote for her as a vote for Lee.
In response to Tsai’s comment that it is a tragedy that Taiwanese have been unable to choose their own destinies in the past few hundred years, Hung yesterday said: “It is the misfortune of Taiwanese to be too busy throwing mud and vilifying each other to be able to focus on how to overcome economic hardship and fight together.”
When asked whether her recent criticism of Lee was really an attempt to vilify Tsai, Hung said that as Lee clearly has high expectations of Tsai, Tsai should make clear her relationship with him and explain to the public whether she supports Lee’s ideas.
Hung was particularly fierce when speaking in front of Republic of China veterans on Friday in Hsinchu, lashing out at Lee for “saying Taiwan belongs to Japan as a former president.”
“Are you not pissed off? Do you not hate him?” she asked the veterans.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS