Hundreds of people yesterday joined an early celebration in Taipei for Taiwanese independence pioneer Su Beng’s (史明) 100th birthday, while Su urged President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to ensure that Taiwanese could become the master of their own nation.
The block party on Ketagalan Boulevard was organized by dozens of pro-independence groups, musicians, performers and publishers, which featured performances, speeches and a book fair.
Tsai made a brief appearance at about 5pm, joining Su on stage to give him a hug and some gifts.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
She read a birthday card she had written to him: “I am thankful that you have proven to Taiwanese with your life that people can earn dignity if they persist with their dreams.”
Su, a vocal supporter of Tsai during her presidential campaign, thanked her and other participants, saying that although he rarely celebrated birthdays in the decades after he left Taiwan at age 20, he felt blessed by the birthday wishes of fellow independence advocates.
Life is “worth living” with a lifelong commitment to Taiwan and its people, he said, adding that he had achieved little over his decades of activism.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Su asked Tsai to lead her administration in line with public opinion to achieve the goal of “making Taiwanese their own master,” adding that this is an optimal time to achieve independence.
“The world has changed greatly. We need to be more hard-working to understand the public while working in line with public opinion,” Su said.
“President Tsai Ing-wen can hopefully put forward policies that can correspond to global trends and satisfy the need of Taiwanese,” he said.
“The train of progress has started. This is the first time that Taiwan has had a female president in its 400-year history. The nation has to do the right thing and be united and persistent while preventing the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] from regaining power to become a leading nation on equal footing with other nations,” he said.
Tsai’s efforts alone cannot achieve the goal; it requires everyone’s commitment, he said.
Su, whose given name is Shih Chao-hui (施朝暉), was born in Taipei on Nov. 9, 1918. According to the traditional Chinese way of counting birthdays, that makes him 100 years old.
He left Taiwan to study at Japan’s Waseda University.
After graduating in 1942, he went to China, where he worked undercover as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-Japanese efforts, but eventually grew dissatisfied with the party.
He returned to Taiwan in 1949, where he founded the Taiwan Independence Association a year later.
He attempted to organize an armed resistance against the KMT, but was forced into hiding in 1951. He escaped by boat to Japan in May 1952, but was arrested and served time for illegally entry,
However, after the KMT announced he was wanted in connection with a plot to assassinate Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), Japan gave him political asylum and he lived there in exile until 1993, when he snuck back into Taiwan by boat.
He has advocated Taiwanese nationalism as a foundation to abolish the Republic of China framework.
His 1962 book, Taiwan’s 400 Year History, is considered a landmark work of the independence movement.
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