Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus on Friday last week held a news conference to question the authenticity of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) doctoral diploma and dissertation from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Armed with their own diplomas and dissertations from overseas institutions were legislators Lin Yi-hua (林奕華), Arthur Chen (陳宜民) and Yosi Takun, in an academic show-and-tell that only added to the sense of political theater surrounding this latest attempt to smear Tsai.

Su Beng (史明), who died on Friday, lived a very long life. His 100 years encompassed a fascinating journey that personifies the sorrow of Taiwan, its people being oppressed in one way or another, but through it all, he never stopped fighting, and whether or not one agrees with his independence ideals, he gave his all for his beloved homeland.

Born when Taiwan was a Japanese colony, Su’s fight began in China when he worked as a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agent in Shanghai in the early 1940s during the Second Sino-Japanese War after graduating from Japan’s Waseda University. He believed that fighting against the Japanese on the front lines was the best way to rid Taiwan of colonialism.