Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have recently tried to clarify that their opposition to importing US pork containing ractopamine is not the same as opposing the US, and accused President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her administration of linking the two in an attempt to distort their positions.

In late August last year, the Tsai administration announced that it would lift a ban on imports of US pork containing ractopamine and beef from cattle more than 30 months old. Then-US vice president Mike Pence said that Taiwan’s decision opened the door for further economic cooperation and stronger trade ties between the nations. Then-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo echoed Pence, saying that the US welcomed Tsai’s move and that this opened the door to bilateral trade and economic cooperation.

During a discouraging, if not desperate, long night in 2014, a large number of citizens stood up to oppose the illegitimate legislative process of a proposed cross-strait service trade agreement, yet the peaceful protest and the exercise of free speech were met with a violent police response.

When the charges against seven protesters were dropped on Oct. 8, it marked the end of a nearly seven-year-long legal battle over the storming of the Executive Yuan during the 2014 Sunflower movement.

Upon taking office in 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration withdrew all charges of criminal offenses that are indictable only upon complaint against 126 students who occupied the Executive Yuan.