While reminiscing about late-president Chiang Ching-kuo's (
KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) made the remarks at a symposium co-organized by the Foundation for a Modern Legal System and the KMT-run think tank the National Policy Foundation. The stated purpose of the symposium was to hold discussions evaluating economic policies under the rule of Chiang Ching-kuo.
Chiang Ching-kuo inherited the reins of power following the death of his father, former president Chiang Kai-shek, (蔣介石) in 1975 and ruled until his own death in 1988. The pan-blue camp gives Chiang the younger much of the credit for Taiwan's transformation from dusty backwater to an economic powerhouse.
In a bid to bolster its support in the runup to next March's presidential election, the pan-blue camp, which looks to Chiang Ching-kuo as its spiritual leader, has been attempting to cash in on Chiang's image and public nostalgia for the old days when the economy was doing well.
Listing Chiang Ching-kuo's legacy, Lien said that the most impressive achievement was Chiang Ching-kuo's courage to take responsibility in the face of setbacks such as the loss of the UN seat in 1971, termination of official diplomatic ties with the US in 1979 and the oil crises in 1973 and 1979.
With that said, Lien insinuated President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was one who "likes to put blame on anyone else except himself."
"We should look up to Chiang [the younger] as an model to [teach us]. not to let administrative decisions be dictated by political considerations," Lien told his audience, among which included several KMT's old guards such as former premier Lee Huan (李煥), Sun Yun-suan (孫運璿) and former Control Yuan president Wang Tso-jung (王作榮).
Painting the performance of the DPP administration as inferior to that of Chiang Ching-kuo's, Lien lashed at the Chen administration for knowing only how to build up national debt and not come up with substantial measures to bring down the gap between the wealthy and the poor.
Lien also criticized Chen's national policy advisers as merely a group of high-level business leaders.
PFP Chairman James Soong (
He sang the praises of Chiang Ching-kuo's practice of making frequent visits to grassroots organizations and learning bout their needs.Analysts say that in saying so, Soong was insinuating that Chen's visits to various localities were merely for show, thus not truly to hear the voice from the grassroots.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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