Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday promoted “cross-strait integration” (兩岸統合) as a model for keeping peace between Taiwan and China, while announcing that she would be organizing activities to promote her ideas.
A series of national affairs forums is being planned to encourage public discussion about her political integration model, she said, addressing a gathering at the “Her-Story, 50 Years for New Women” special exhibition at Tainan’s Wu Family Garden.
Attending the event was former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), whose family is from Tainan.
Photo: Hung Jui-chin, Taipei Times
Lu said that “cross-strait integration” should replace “cross-strait unification” (兩岸統一), while calling on Beijing to take up the “one Zhonghua” (一個中華) concept, instead of “one China” (一個中國) idea.
Zhonghua means “Chinese.”
It is difficult to promote “unification,” as very few people in Taiwan would accept it, while integration can be discussed as it is broader in scope, Lu said.
The nations could then move toward forming a “Zhonghua confederation” (中華邦聯), which would encourage closer political and economic ties across the Strait, she said.
Lu has advocated the confederation model over the past few years.
She said her idea is based on the formation of the EU, or regional blocs such as ASEAN and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
“In facing the threat of war, the Taiwanese government must push its soft power... I am presenting these ideas because Taiwan’s ruling and opposition parties have not provided any new policies for cross-strait relations,” Lu said. “Our young people are lost, with no clear direction.”
To advocate her political ideas, Lu has is planning a rally dubbed “Peace and Love for Taiwan,” co-organized with several major religious organizations.
Lu’s idea is to promote peace in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The rally was scheduled for May 14, but due to the COVID-19 outbreak has been postponed to Aug. 14, she said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members in the audience were conspicuous in their lack of support for Lu’s ideas.
Chen said: “I will not talk about this today,” while other politicians also declined to comment.
Political experts have said that Lu has drifted from the DPP, and most party members and supporters disagree with most of her ideas.
Forming a confederation with China would mean giving up Taiwan’s sovereignty and democratic way of life, they said.
Professor Chang Cheng-shuh (張正修), a former political strategist for the DPP and a former Examination Yuan member, said that most DPP supporters see Lu as using her controversial concepts to get closer to the pro-China political camps.
“Most people now view Lu as a former politician who has outdated ideas, and has no popular support, so she has taken up more far-out positions to ... gain public attention and media coverage,” Chang said. “Lu is trying to stay relevant ... but she is out of touch with the current generation.”
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
PUBLIC POLL: More than half believe Chinese drills would make Taiwanese less willing to unify with China, while 36 percent said an invasion was highly unlikely Half of Taiwanese support independence, according to the results of a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which also found that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) support rating fell by 7 percentage points. Fifty percent of respondents supported independence, 25.7 percent supported maintaining the “status quo” and 11.8 percent supported unification, while 12.1 percent had no opinion, did not know or refused to answer, the foundation said. Support for independence is the new mainstream opinion, regardless of which party is in power, foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said. Insinuations that Taiwan wants to maintain the “status quo” are a fabrication that
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
RSS