Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Rethinking the Sunflower movement

Huang Yu-zhe and Lee Ming-ju 黃于哲李明洳

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.

China puts premier Su on no-entry list

Taipei Times

Premier Su Tseng-chang responds to questions about China banning him as well as members of his family at the legislature in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times

Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and other top Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials yesterday condemned Beijing after it announced that they had been placed on a no-entry list and would be subject to further sanctions.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) said that Taiwanese independence advocates and their family members would face life-long legal consequences should they set foot in China, including Hong Kong and Macau, or conduct business with entities there.

Tsai must put nation on war footing

Mark Rawson

“Taiwanese shrug off China threat and place their trust in ‘Daddy America,’” ran the headline of a Financial Times article on Aug. 23, bemoaning Taiwan’s apparent complacency in the face of China’s military intimidation and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) talk of “reunification of the motherland.”

The article cited a poll in April that found only 39.6 percent of respondents expected a cross-strait war, and noted that many Taiwanese beneficiaries of US-donated COVID-19 vaccines had expressed their thanks on Facebook with the words: “Thank you, Daddy America.”

Rhetoric apart, little is truly familial about the Taiwan-China-US tangle.

Pork referendum set to serve CCP

Chuang Sheng-rong 莊勝榮

One of the four referendums that are to be put to the vote on Dec. 18 is about opposing imports of pork that contains traces of leanness-enhancing agents. The rationale behind the proposal is that such substances are harmful to human health. At first glance this seems reasonable, but it actually has no medical or scientific basis. The real purpose of the referendum is to lay the groundwork for next year’s local government elections, and the presidential and legislative elections that are to take place in 2024.

The referendum’s proposers think that opposing imports of US pork on the grounds of safeguarding Taiwanese’s health would enable them to win these elections, but at its core, the proposal is all about cozying up to communist China while opposing the US. The proposers think they can only beat the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is on the same team as the US, by teaming up with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

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