The Sun Yat-sen School, established last year by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), yesterday announced that it will nominate candidates for the party’s primary elections for next year’s mayoral and councilor elections to achieve peace and reconcile with Beijing.
The school will field its own mayoral and councilor candidates to seek KMT nomination, focusing on the six special municipalities, principal Chang Ya-chung (張亞中) said during a National Day banquet the foundation organized in Taipei yesterday.
However, he declined to name the candidates.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Chang dismissed the possibility of Hung joining the primary elections, saying only that the school would announce a list of candidates within a few weeks.
Chang rejected a claim that Hung’s faction directed the school’s participation in the primary elections, adding that their participation would allow the KMT to nominate the most eligible candidates to compete with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The school would act independently and raise its own funds, Chang added.
The participation intends to “save Taiwan and the Republic of China [ROC] from Taiwanese independence and cross-strait military conflict,” Chang said.
He criticized the DPP for its pro-independence stance and the KMT for its failure to achieve peaceful reconciliation with Beijing.
Premier William Lai’s (賴清德) “pragmatic independence” is part of the “separatism” the DPP advocates to “remove” Taiwan from China, Chang said.
“The DPP has completed a reverse takeover [of the ROC]. It suppresses the ROC while ostensibly supporting it,” Chang said. “We have to rescue the ROC from being taken over by Taiwanese independence.”
The DPP does not accept the so-called “1992 consensus” and has been trying to remove Chinese history from school curricula, and if it is re-elected in the general elections in 2020, military tension in the Taiwan Strait would escalate, a situation that the school seeks to avoid, he said.
The “1992 consensus” — a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 said he made up in 2000 — refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the Chinese government that both sides acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
The foundation aims to achieve peace and reconciliation with Beijing and improve identification with China, with the goal of signing a peace treaty or an armistice with Beijing to end decades of military hostility, he said, echoing the “peace platform” proposed by Hung.
The peace platform was a clause added to the KMT charter last year proposing to negotiate a peace treaty with China, but it was revoked on Aug. 20 after Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) took office as KMT chairman.
The school also aims to resuscitate the KMT using the philosophy of ROC founder Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), Chang said.
“The KMT should return to Sun’s Three Principles of the People, which is the most important factor with which the KMT could garner the support of Taiwanese,” he said.
The KMT has been losing some of its core narratives since former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) term, and although it was able to fund its election campaigns with party assets, the party is losing that edge as it is being challenged over the party assets issue, Chang said.
Four factors led to the declaration of a typhoon day and the cancelation of classes yesterday, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said. Work and classes were canceled across Taiwan yesterday as Typhoon Krathon was forecast to make landfall in the southern part of the country. However, northern Taiwan had only heavy winds during the day and rain in the evening, leading some to criticize the cancelation. Speaking at a Taipei City Council meeting yesterday, Chiang said the decision was made due to the possibility of landslides and other problems in mountainous areas, the need to avoid a potentially dangerous commute for those
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
PRO-CHINA SLOGANS: Two DPP members criticized police officers’ lack of action at the scene, saying that law enforcement authorities should investigate the incident Chinese tourists allegedly interrupted a protest in Taipei on Tuesday held by Hong Kongers, knocked down several flags and shouted: “Taiwan and Hong Kong belong to China.” Hong Kong democracy activists were holding a demonstration as Tuesday was China’s National Day. A video posted online by civic group Hong Kong Outlanders shows a couple, who are allegedly Chinese, during the demonstration. “Today is China’s National Day, and I won’t allow the displaying of these flags,” the male yells in the video before pushing some demonstrators and knocking down a few flagpoles. Radio Free Asia reported that some of the demonstrators
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
RSS