Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Protecting our freedom of speech

Taipei Times Editorial

As growing numbers of Falun Gong practitioners flee persecution in China, they are coming to the attention of overseas Chinese. Protest activities where they hold up banners and arrange press conferences accusing China of persecution are spreading all over the world. Falun Gong activities are a common sight on the streets of Taipei, which is why it was surprising that police fined one of the movement’s adherents for distributing flyers in front of Taipei 101.

Interior designer Hsu Po-kun (許柏坤) challenged the fine, and, fortunately, the Taipei District Court decided he did not have to pay up. Had that not been the case, it would have been a dark smudge indeed on freedom of expression in Taiwan.

Victory for ECFA opponents in debate

Taipei Times Editorial

The results of the first televised debate on the proposed economic framework cooperation agreement (ECFA) came as an embarrassing defeat for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government on Monday.

Initially nine to seven in favor of the planned trade pact that the KMT government wishes to sign with China, the 16-member audience — made up of students from National Taiwan University, Soochow University and Shih Hsin University — changed their minds halfway through the debate, with only one continuing to support the ECFA and the other 15 turning against it. At the conclusion of the two-hour debate, five said they supported the proposed pact, 10 were against it and one was undecided.

Inside Taiwan’s Political Purgatory: 228 Massacre scars Taiwan history (Part 3 of 20)

Michael Richardson

On February 28, 1947, the Kuomintang troops of Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China regime began a repressive crackdown of a spontaneous and popular uprising of the Taiwanese people against Chinese rule of occupied Taiwan following World War II.

Four decades of harsh martial law followed the 228 Massacre and subsequent White Terror period when it was even illegal to commemorate the anniversary of the 1947 tragedy.

ROC Splendid 100, Who is Paying for This Reinterpretation of Splendid?

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

"Republic of China Splendid 100" so reads Ma Ying-jeou's Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed new slogan for Taiwan. Splendid and for Taiwan? How so? When the Republic of China (ROC) allegedly was founded in 1911, Taiwan had already been modernizing since 1895 and was some fifteen years on its way to becoming Japan's model colony to the world. On the other side of the Taiwan Strait in 1911, some Han Chinese that were tired of having had to wear the Manchu queue for centuries in a disheveling Manchu Empire hatched a revolt that never quite succeeded. By 1912, sixteen of twenty-two provinces joined in, but the crucial ones in the north where Puyi was emperor and Yuan Shi-kai, commander of the Beiyang Army held power, remained firm. So begins splendid.

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