The following was written by a junior high school second year student in Taipei.
(Name withheld)
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The
question isn’t exactly if China will invade Taiwan or not. China has already decided to try and
"reclaim the break away province" that is not the break away
province. One thing I want to make clear
is that Taiwan is an entirely different country and we have always been a
different people. We are Taiwanese, not
a kind of Chinese. It's not like we are
a break away province trying to gain freedom, we were here BEFORE China even
noticed us. Anyways Taiwan's history
before China tried to control us is pretty complicated so I won't go into
detail about that.
Before
I keep going, I'll have to give an explanation on what the KMT are. In the 1900s Chang Kai Shek and Mao Zhe Dong
were both leaders fighting to get power of China. Chang Kai Shek lost and fled to the island of
Taiwan to get away from Mao. Now don't
get me wrong, he was not fighting for freedom in China, he just wanted the
power for himself. The reason these two
people are fighting is because they want the powers for themself. Okay now that (I think) I've gotten that
straight I'll move on. When Chang Kai
Shek came to Taiwan he established a dictatorship here. Don't believe what most textbooks say about
him, he was not a nice guy trying to help out Taiwan. Yes, he was not a communist, but he was a
fascist and that's almost the same thing. He called himself "general" but in
reality he was a dictator. He killed
many thousands of innocent
people and put Taiwan under martial law. So this is the guy that led the KMT or Kuomintang.
This is the political party that likes Chang Kai Shek, wants China to take over
Taiwan, and doesn't want Taiwan to be a democracy.
So coming
back to present time. Unfortunately in
2008 people were not thinking of that and voted for Ma Eng Jioh the guy that is
chairman of the KMT party. (I know many
people who didn't, but there were a lot of people who were drawn in by his nice
speeches and promises of good stuff, kind of like what happened with Obama. There are also people who just care about
power and money that would vote for him.
It is also possible that there were some fraud votes.) Now that he's in
office and has the power, he's been trying to get Taiwan to become part of
China. It wasn't really happening very
well (at least it was happening very slowly) until the following happened: The
KMT signed a trade tract with China. Let
me explain more about this pact before I go on.
Sounds
fair, it might even benefit Taiwan, right? This doesn't sound really bad, does it? At
first, maybe, but let me give you the details. It's like the "Trojan Horse" of
China. Normally trade pacts should take
YEARS to look over and discuss, ESPECIALLY with a communist country like China.
Not this time, the way that the pact was
passed was very sneaky. They met to supposedly
"discuss" the trade pact but instead they "discussed" for
30 seconds then suddenly said, "Okay, it's passed." You have to start wondering about that, don't
you? Before I go on I need to give more
about the details of the trade pact. First
of all, China has 1600 missiles pointed at us. Do you really negotiate a "real"
trade pact with a country that has missiles pointed at you? Secondly, this is not just trading food or
different material, this is allowing workers from China to flood into Taiwan
and work in major industries. Again, at
first this doesn't sound bad. But think
a little bit longer. So a Chinese worker
eventually owns a Taiwanese industry and everything seems fine. Then, since he's the boss, he can eventually
tell all the Taiwanese workers to leave and that he just wants his own Chinese
workers, making less work for Taiwanese and more work for Chinese. It’s starting to sound bad, right? Here's another thing. All businessmen that have been here for 6
years can vote. Well that means that
they are going to vote for the KMT, and since there are so many of them then
there isn't a chance that the people who want democracy and oppose the KMT will
have enough votes. It's a slower process
than an immediate invasion, but it slowly floods out all the Taiwanese and
makes Taiwan overrun with Chinese. As
the Chinese make more work and slowly take over higher positions, Taiwan is
basically gone. This is exactly the same
thing that happened to Hong Kong. Did
you know that some of Taiwan's biggest supporters are people from Hong Kong? They went through this exact same thing and
realize what will happen to Taiwan if we pass the pact. Hong Kong actually wasn't Chinese; they were
Cantonese.
So now
that I'm done with the trade pact, I'll get to what's going on now. So many people were outraged at this trade
pact because we felt like Ma was betraying Taiwan. (Well, he was.) On March 18th, 300 students
gathered together and got in to occupy the Legislative Yuan (the Congress
Building) where the pact was going to be signed. Before I go on let me get something straight:
These students are clean, organized, and most importantly entirely peaceful. They take care of their trash and even started
cleaning off graffiti. The protest they
are doing is called “civil disobedience.” We were so happy that they took the initiative
to do this because we would not have known what to do. Anyway the police tried to get in several
times but failed. So the police took to
not letting anyone out and not letting anyone in. Well to show their support, more then 10,000
people came, sat, and are still sitting around the Legislative Yuan where the
students are inside. Right now even more
people have gone to sit there and show support. The president, Ma, has refused to talk to the
students and is totally ignoring us. In
fact, they are still trying to get the pact passed even though they can't go to
do it at the building. Well after a while another group of people went to
occupy the presidential cabinet building. This time, Ma sent riot police to go and kick
them out of the area. Imagine, riot
police! These students were just
peacefully sitting there! Well they got
in, beat the students until many were bleeding, and set the water cannons on
them. It was so sad to hear the sirens
going down the street. (We live pretty
close to the parliament building.)
Then a
rally was scheduled for Sunday afternoon, March 30th, 1-7 PM for all
to show support to the students and want Taiwan to be a free democracy. Everyone wore black to signify the "black
box" (or in the USA the expression means "behind closed doors")
in which the pact was made and brought sunflowers that signified hope and
transparency to all. Guess what? 700,000 people came! I was at the rally; there could easily have been
that many people. They covered so many
streets and almost everyone couldn't hear the speeches being made because there
were too many people that we couldn't get to the stage. It was amazing! That was around a week ago.
Well
now, our president and the KMT are still ignoring us. I mean, ignoring 700,000 people?? They are still doing their best to ignore us
and, unfortunately, they have the wealth and power to do that. Ma wants to arrest the students now and
they're still trying to get the trade pact passed. That is where the prayers are needed now.
OK,
now where the USA comes in is that first of all, there is hardly anything on
the news over there about a rally that had 700,000 people fighting for
democracy. All that's really being
reported is stuff that China reports on, which, of course, is mostly lies
because they want to cover up all that they are doing (Like beating up peaceful
and unarmed students until they are bleeding). So while Taiwan is struggling for democracy and
freedom, the news in the USA is showing Michelle Obama doing some tour in
China... it's like they want to “get good” with communist China and aren't
paying attention to a struggling democracy.
Well, I hope that explains what’s going on over here.
