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| Letters
to the Editor --Brown
Daily Herald |
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Despite PRC fantasy, Taiwan is
absolutely independent
November 13, 2007
Taiwan is not (and has
never been, not even for a day) a part of the People's
Republic of China. Period. On that same note, the People's
Republic of China is not a part of Taiwan. Period. Perhaps
that's easier to understand.
Recently, the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party
in China concluded with a reshuffling and an election of new
leaders to China's powerful ruling elite, and the
predictable trumpet-tooting nationalistic message, somehow,
"the Taiwan issue is an internal issue," was reiterated once
again. Of course in his closing remarks, President Hu Jintao
also mentioned China's movement "towards democracy" - a
democracy with one party and a democracy like that in Hong
Kong, where leaders are ceremoniously voted for by the
people but ultimately chosen by the Party itself.
Perhaps a definition of democracy is what China is really
seeking, and it need only to look towards its neighbor
across the Taiwan Strait to understand what democracy is.
Emerging from one of the world's longest periods of martial
law, Taiwan has peacefully transitioned from a country where
speaking Taiwanese meant imprisonment, to a fully-democratic
country which today reaches out through humanitarianism to
the far reaches of the world. Further, Taiwan does this even
though it is subject to China's bullying every day: because
of China's veto power, there is no United Nations or World
Health Organization membership for Taiwan, whereas other
countries like North Korea and Sudan, whose modern day
atrocities are well-documented, have been members of these
organizations for years.
Taiwan controls its own military, runs its own democratic
politics, has its own laws, culture, language and history
for its 23 million citizens, maintains its own diplomatic
relations with countries, and just as America is its own
country, no external country controls any of the
aforementioned components of Taiwan. How does China still
have the nerve to say that Taiwan is a part of China, or
that Taiwan is an "internal affair?" This is the rhetoric
that has been piled upon Taiwan in an attempt to bury the
emergence of democracy on a tiny island nation where many of
its inhabitants still remember being unable to speak their
native tongue for fear of arrest. These are the citizens of
a country that refused to let democracy fall even when
during its first democratic elections, China fired missiles
into Taiwan's commercial ports in an attempt to intimidate
the citizens of Taiwan. And of course, the Chinese are wont
to remind the people of Taiwan that the number of ballistic
missiles pointed at Taiwan increases every day with a recent
count at nearly 1,000. To Taiwanese people, that's 1,000
missiles pointed at our parents, our grandparents, our
cousins, and our friends.
So let us choose for ourselves. Let us, our parents, our
friends and our grandparents choose. The Taiwan issue has
long been overshadowed by China's insistence and propaganda
that it is an internal affair to be decided by the Chinese.
Let the people of a country that stands up to China
determine their own place in the international community,
free of Chinese missiles and China's doublespeak that tries
to force and seduce blind eyes over the world. And let the
United States, in true form, uphold its values and support
the successful democracy that is Taiwan, instead of
appeasing China and feeding the fantasy of the PRC-Emperor's
new clothes. Just because the Communist Party continues to
say Hong Kong "has retained" its democratic freedoms under
the "One Country, Two Systems" policy, does not make it so.
Just because the Communist Party says the next reincarnate
of the Dalai Lama must be approved by the PRC, does not make
it so. Just because the Communist Party says that the Falun
Gong is an evil, harmful religion deserving of persecution,
does not make it so. Just because the Communist Party still
insists the Tiananmen "incident" was not a massacre of its
own citizens but an overblown uprising instigated by
students, does not make it so.
To any logical mind holding the true facts, Taiwan is
absolutely no "internal affair" of the PRC Communist Party,
so let us all speak out against the fallacies of
regurgitated rhetoric like Demafeliz's, and ensure that
Taiwan does not end up a character in China's fictional
fantasy.
Rich Hsieh '03, Johnny Lin '10,
Sara Lin '03, Peter Chai '06 MD '10, Abraham Young '05 and
Zoe Tseng '06 co-authored this column. |
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