The Wild Strawberry Student Movement

An amazing nationwide movement of students in Taiwan began after the KMT government of President Ma Ying-jeou called in several thousand police to suppress freedom of speech, assembly and the press during the visit from China's envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林). Ma's government tried to suppress protests or even any patriotic flag display or playing Taiwan-centric music during the visit of the envoy from the Communist nation of China. In reaction to this grave threat to freedom, democracy and Taiwan's sovereignty students mobilized to form the Wild Strawberry Student Movement. Their blog is action1106.blogspot.com . Their English-language blog is taiwanstudentmovement2008.blogspot.com . Students are holding protests in the large cities of Taiwan including Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung.



They are demanding:
1. That President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) offer a public apology
2. That National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chun (王卓鈞) and National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Tsao-ming (蔡朝明) step down for excessive force by police last week
3. That the government amend the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法) to lift the requirement forcing rally organizers to seek government approval before staging a demonstration.


As we find more information, we'll add it to this post.

Taipei Times 2008/11/12
http://vimeo.com/2205674



Other Blogs, Articles, and News Sources:

* David on Formosa
* Far-Eastern Sweet Potato

Taiwan's KMT government taking away democratic freedoms in kowtow to Beijing

On the international wire, you only hear of the "historic" trade agreements signed.

That is just a show being put on by the KMT and the CCP.

The real story:

In a move not seen since the authoritarian dictatorship era in Taiwan, the KMT party which currently has the legislature and executive branches of government has blocked freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press -- during the visit of China's envoy and head of ARATS, Chen Yunlin.

Several thousand policemen, people's flags were confiscated, press were barred from the hotel meetings, private stores off of public streets were forcibly closed (e.g. Sunrise Record Store was targeted by police for playing a Taiwanese song 戀戀北迴線)


Jerome Keating wrote an excellent analysis and insider look at the goings-on at the Grand Hotel where Chen Yunlin stayed.

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Meanwhile, the KMT has been stepping up its arrest and detention of opposition leaders -- see the following article

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林奐均 Lin Huan-chun's open letter to supporters of the then presidential candidate Ma in March before the election of Ma Ying-jeou now seems quite prescient: pointing to evidence over the past eight years, it warned about how the KMT had not really changed from its authoritarian past. The evidence gets clearer with each succeeding month of Ma's administration.

Standing Up for Taiwan's Sovereignty & Calling China to Account

There is an excellent blog by an Eric from Tainan called the Taiwan Dream Foundation. Eric wrote a piece on the China melamine-in-milk scandal and the KMT's response. DEMO! heard that Eric was one of the ones to confront the ARATS deputy from China 張銘清 this week [video]. Zhang has in the past made many disparaging and inflamatory remarks towards Taiwan. To give one of many examples, the Taipei Times reported that Zhang stated in 2004, “We will smash the separatist schemes of the Taiwanese independence movement at all costs.” Despite commonly exhibiting this kind of rhetoric, Zhang was invited here for a visit by the Ma administration.

Zhang's carefully scripted visit did not go as the Leninist KMT of Taiwan and the Leninist CCP of China had planned. Taiwanese came to confront Zhang at the Confucian Temple in order to call China to account for its international oppression of its peaceful neighbor. Taiwanese were unwilling to let this particular Chinese government official's insults go uncontested, nor were they willing to see Ma's stealth annexation agenda succeed. So during Zhang's truncated three-day visit, Taiwanese introduce him to real freedom of speech in the real, democratic nation of Taiwan. Zhang shortened his trip claiming health reasons, but perhaps he did not like losing face; maybe in his authoritarian country, he is unaccustomed to the freedoms that Taiwan's citizens enjoy; maybe he is used to crowds being "controlled" like his PRC government did in Tiannanmen Square in 1989 and at the Olympics this year.

At the Confucian Temple in Tainan City, Tainan City Councilor Wang Ding-yu (王定宇), Kaohsiung City Councilor Hsiao Yung-ta (蕭永達), and others confronted him. They made clear statements in front of the Taiwan news media and also this Chinese government official who had come to visit Taiwan that Taiwan is a sovereign nation and that Taiwan and China are different countries. We need to support these courageous citizens of the nation of Taiwan.

Tainan's Confucian Temple, incidentally, is a place every foreigner should visit. One could wish this foreigner, Mr. Zhang from China, had looked at the historical artifacts there more closely and clearmindedly instead of with the eyes of China's propaganda. You can see clearly on the three-hundred-year-old stone tablets that though many of Taiwan's people immigrated from China, Taiwan was never part of China. West Taiwan was part of the non-Chinese Manchu Empire from the late 1600's to 1895.

That the Manchu Empire was not Chinese is evident on the tablets that are engraved in two languages: Manchu (with an entirely different script), and Chinese characters for the Han subjects to read. Some tablets were only engraved in the Manchu language (in Taiwan!). Chinese regimes cannot bear the thought of having been conquered so when in history they were conquered and annexed by large foreign empires such as the Mongols or the Manchus, China will, in a propaganda process worthy of the greatest Taoist alchemists, magically turn these foreign empires into "Chinese" dynasties -- in this case the "Yuan" and the "Qing" -- so as not to lose face.

To maintain the fiction for the sake of their ethnic nationalistic pride, Chinese regimes then try to claim any territory once governed by those foreign empires as part of the "Chinese" motherland. Mongolia, Tibet, and Central Asia countries fall into its "borders" to be reclaimed. Taiwan is another such location. No matter what the history is, or the fact that the Manchu empire ceded Taiwan in perpetuity to Japan in 1895 by international treaty, China will still claim it as an "inseparable part of the motherland that has been part of China since ancient times."

Repeat lies long enough and with enough backing and money and people may even begin to believe them. But you cannot so easily erase what is literally carved in stone at the Confucian Temple and also at the Taiwanese pirate king Koxinga's old Anping Castle in Tainan City. This castle, incidentally, was originally a Dutch fort, because the Dutch were in Taiwan in the 1600's and they were the ones who originally encouraged Chinese immigrants to cross the Strait and begin rice-farming in the Dutch colonial lands of west Taiwan. This is because the Austronesian culture and economy of Taiwan's inhabitants at the time were not as amenable to taxation. Before the Dutch came, Taiwan had been for thousands of years the homeland of the Austronesian peoples, the land Maori in New Zealand to the far south and Hawaiins to the north called "Hawaiiki". [ref: Science Daily, Taipei Times]

Please join with blogs like the Taiwan Democracy Movement and the Taiwan Dream Foundation in ensuring that the truth will never be buried.

Chinese Successor Government Owes Debt from its Predecessor

China cannot have it both ways. It stakes a claim on Taiwan based on the PRC being a successor government to former Chinese regimes. Whether or not that claim to being a successor government actually gives legitimacy to its claim on Taiwan is a separate question. But although the PRC claims to be a successor government of China, it refuses to pay back the international debt the former regime incurred. Here is a recent report about this issue.

The actual truth of history is that no Chinese regime has ever governed Taiwan. The last Chinese regime was the Ming Empire. It was conquered by a non-Chinese Manchu Empire that like the Mongols before ruled a vast territory encompassing many cultures including China. The Manchu Empire were the ones to establish a marginal rule over the west coast of Taiwan. But they gave up all right and claim to Taiwan in perpetuity to Japan in 1895 by an international treaty. Japan was the nation to finally conquer and unify the entire island. Japan then gave up its claim to Taiwan in the Treaty of San Francisco after World War II. But it did not designate a successor. By all international laws and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Taiwan belongs to the Taiwanese people and is a free and independent nation.

No privacy or freedom of speech in China

China is tracking, blocking, and recording text messages of its citizens: is this what you want to happen to Taiwan? The Ma administration and the KMT Legislative majority must be opposed by Taiwanese if they wish to keep their freedom. Whatever their intent, the KMT in effect is rushing, pushing Taiwan headlong into annexation by China.

Neo-imperialism: China, Russia, and their imitators

In the 20th Century, European countries gave up their imperialism and colonialism around the world. They set colonized peoples free and welcomed them as equal nations. To many of these former colonial powers, their past actions have become unthinkable in the present world. But countries like China and Russia seem to be embracing a neo-imperialism in the 21st Century. They do not think like free democratic nations. Their priorities are different: annexation or dominance and exploitation. Free nations around the world must realize this in dealing with these neo-imperialist countries and not operate under the assumptions that they will have the same standards of civilization and behavior.

Here is more evidence of the neo-imperialism of China: in Africa. Every African nation that gives up its ties to Taiwan in order to embrace China may get more than they bargained for. It would be interesting to see how fast Malawi goes down this same road since it derecognized Taiwan in order to get "benefits" from China in January of 2008.

More Money does not Change Dictatorships

Here is an article by Thaddeus McCotter and John J. Tkacik called The China Delusion. It helpfully exposes the fact that as the authoritarian regime in China has grown in economic power from freeing up state control over commerce, it has cracked down even more on any other type of freedom. Their assessment: "By every objective standard, China’s freedoms of expression, press, assembly, religion, labor organization, were greater in April 1989 and have declined precipitously since." But so many leaders in politics and industry around the world keep trying to say that with economic growth will certainly come human rights and freedom. This same fallacy served to sooth the consciences of IOC members awarding the Olympics to Beijing. But the Olympics have only served to give the regime legitimacy and spur the regime to further restrictions of freedom.

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Following is a letter Joel Linton wrote to the National Review with a similar analysis.
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(RE: Illiberal Education - August 8, 2008)

Dear NR,

Many people speak hopefully that the Chinese government is no longer "narrowly ideological" based on its observable turn away from communism to capitalism. They think they see fundamental change, but the Chinese government has barely changed at all.

One must look back beyond 20th Century communism: China may be "Communist in name only" but it is imperialist in all but name. The party regime has simply taken the position of the single emperor; the basic structure and expectation of rule from over 2000 years of Chinese history remains below the surface. One merely need look at some of the movies coming out of modern "capitalist" China to feel its pulse. In the movie, "Hero," the hero (played by Jet Li) lets himself be killed rather than kill the emperor because he comes to realize the emperor's right to rule "all under heaven."

From this mad "center of the world" kingdom (中國) perspective, it is only right and fitting that China take the world stage as the great empire which must either annex other surrounding barbarian nations, or at least exact tribute from them. Chinese imperialism that faced crises of the Opium Wars and European Colonialism adapted to the modern world via a syncretistic embrace of Leninism, thereby looking after its own survival and national greatness. Only to the world's peril do foreign nations wistfully project their own way of reasoning onto the Chinese actions. Look how many treated Hitler during his "peaceful rise." The world must take care lest Beijing 2008 be but a reprise of Berlin 1936.

- Joel Linton
Taipei, Taiwan