Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers have called for an inquiry after retired army general Chen Ting-chung (陳廷寵) on Tuesday said that “Taiwan’s military combat capabilities are close to none, and it has no chance in a war against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.”
“I am a Chinese, which is a symbol of pride ... but our Chinese race has a lot of scum who are willing to become running dogs of the US and Japan,” the former commander-in-chief of the army said in a speech at the Republic of China Military Academy in Kaohsiung.
After he also said that the nation’s leaders are “ignorant” people with “no intelligence” who have “distorted and misrepresented history, leading the descendants of the Chinese Yellow Emperor to be downtrodden in their current impoverished state of despair,” DPP lawmakers on Thursday urged the Ministry of Education to review an annual NT$60 million (US$2.06 million) subsidy paid to Chen’s Huadong Taiwan Businessman’s School in China’s Kunshan.
Photo: Chang Li-hua, Taipei Times
Chen opened the school in 2001 and the ministry agreed to provide a subsidy so that children of the Taiwanese business community would receive a similar education as in Taiwan.
“Let’s terminate the subsidy to Chen’s school... As the school’s founder, he insulted people ... and the government should not provide him with further financial subsidies,” DPP Legislator Chaung Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said.
“The ministry must re-enforce its scrutiny of the school’s curriculum and conduct its checks on the strictest terms,” DPP Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) said.
Ministry officials said that while Chen’s words were inappropriate, there is no direct relationship between the speech and the subsidy, adding that they would confer with the Mainland Affairs Council and other agencies on how to handle the matter.
The council in a statement expressed its regret about Chen’s remarks, saying that his speech hurt the feelings of the public.
“Operating a school for the Taiwanese business community in China is no easy task. To guarantee the right to education for Taiwanese students in China, we should not link the education subsidy to Chen’s personal remarks, as there is no direct connection,” the statement said.
Additional reporting by Chung Li-hua
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS