Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Chen Shui-bian is the Kuomintang’s most powerful opposition leader

Michael Richardson

Taiwan Political Prisoner Report, Jan. 3, 2013. Chen Shui-bian, broken in spirit and serving a lengthy prison sentence for alleged corruption, still remains the ruling Kuomintang’s chief opposition figure in the Republic of China in-exile. Chen was President of the ROC from 2000 to 2008 and found himself in legal trouble just minutes after leaving office.

Chen Shui-bian was born October 12, 1950 into a poor farming community in Tainan County. The young Chen applied himself to his studies and graduated with honors from high school. Chen attended National Taiwan University Law School becoming a commercial attorney in 1974. In 1975, Chen married Wu Shu-chen, the wealthy daughter of a physician whom he had known since high school, and started a family raising two children.

Taiwanese youth, students show they care

Taipei Times

About 1,000 demonstrators stage a sit-in protest against media monopolization on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei on New Year’s Day, asking President Ma Ying-jeou to respond to their demands.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times

During the year-end celebrations, Taiwanese youth and students showed they care about society and helping others by initiating rallies and lending movements their boundless energy and creativity, from picking up street trash and protesting against monopolization of the media to supporting laid-off workers.

This is a dramatic change from the recent past, when youth and students often gave the impression that they were self-indulgent, engaging in frivolous activities, thrill-seeking, all-night parties and shallow celebrity worship.

Freedom calls for persistence

Taipei Times Editorial

While tens of thousands of people rejoiced at various venues around the nation on New Year’s Eve to celebrate the arrival of 2013, a few hundred people, the majority of them students, huddled at Liberty Square in Taipei and later in front of the Presidential Office, to show their concern for the future of their country.

Braving cold temperatures and rain, the young Taiwanese held their fourth protest in little more than a month, and the fifth since September, against the threat of media monopolization and growing Chinese influence within the industry.

Students furious over Ma’s ‘non-response’

Taipei Times

Hundreds of university students voiced their disappointment and anger over President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) continued silence over their anti-media monopoly appeal following an overnight vigil yesterday and vowed to keep on pressing the president for a response and action on an issue that risks undermining freedom of speech in the nation.

The students launched the protest on 7pm on Monday at Liberty Square, followed by a sit-in protest starting at 4am yesterday on Ketagalan Boulevard, right outside the restricted area for the New Year’s Day flag-raising ceremony. They demanded that the president clarify his position on the controversial Next Media Group (壹傳媒集團) deal and address related issues on media monopoly and Chinese influence over Taiwan’s media.

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