Wu sorry over 'idiots' comment
　

PUBLIC BACKLASH: After defending his use of the word 'idiots' in his description of independence advocates, Wu Den-yih backed down and issued an apology yesterday
　

By Shih Hsiu-chuan and Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTERS
Thursday, Dec 10, 2009, Page 1
　

Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday apologized for controversial remarks he made on Tuesday when he described independence advocates as “idiots.”

In a press release Wu said he was sorry for using the term “idiots” to describe people who seek independence for Taiwan and that he took it back.

His apology, however, came hours after several attempts to defend his remarks.

Wu said during an interview with the UFO Network on Tuesday: “If you want to talk about unification, nobody will support it. You don’t have the capability to unify [China] and you don’t want to be unified by it. Declaring independence is unnecessary because the ROC [Republic of China] is already an independent, sovereign nation. If you want to found a country with a different national title, it will only create division at home and stir tensions abroad. Only irresponsible people or idiots would want to seek independence [for Taiwan].”

Approached by reporters yesterday morning, Wu at first defended himself, saying what he meant was that the ROC has been an independent state since 1912.

Wu spoke to reporters before attending an event at the National Central Library in Taipei to promote the Act Governing Execution of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (公民與政治權利國際公約及經濟社會文化權利國際公約施行法), which goes into effect today.

He said he firmly believed in the “three noes” principle espoused by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), referring to Ma’s pledge not to discuss unification with Beijing during his presidency, not to pursue or support Taiwanese independence and not to resort to military force to resolve the Taiwan issue.

He said the administration’s position is to maintain the “status quo,” adding that all cross-strait policies must be based on the principle that Taiwan is always the focus and public interest comes first.

Wu said he respected the freedom of those who seek independence for Taiwan and such a right should be protected by the government.

However, as the premier of the ROC, Wu said his responsibility was to safeguard the ROC — not to seek unification or independence.

“It is my fundamental belief that protecting Taiwan means defending the sovereignty integrity of the ROC and the safety and well-being of the 23 million people of Taiwan,” he said.

While some reporters still questioned whether the term “idiot” was too strong, Wu said it was “not good” to focus only on a single word and that what he said referred to two groups of people — those who were “irresponsible or idiots.”

“When I say you are either a boy or a girl, I don’t necessarily say you are a girl,” Wu added.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) panned Wu’s comment and criticized the government for “burying its head in the sand” when it comes to the nation’s sovereignty.

“It is unthinkable that a senior government leader could be so self-defeating. This kind of mentality is completely unacceptable,” DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said.

Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲), another DPP lawmaker, said Wu’s statement was discriminatory to all Taiwanese people who view themselves as citizens of a sovereign state and called on the premier to recant his words.

DPP Spokesman Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said it was an indisputable fact that the ROC is an independent, sovereign country and if Wu has any doubt on the country’s status, then he should consider stepping down.

“Since he believes that people who support independence are idiots, does that mean he is the idiotic premier leading an idiotic government?” Tsai said.

Later yesterday, the Government Information Office issued a statement saying Wu considered the words “or idiots” to be “unnecessary words.”

The statement said Wu would like to take back “or idiots” because the term was inconsistent with his “mild” and “harmonious” style.

Beijing moves to indict Liu Xiaobo for subversion

AP, BEIJING
Thursday, Dec 10, 2009, Page 1

Police have finally presented a case against prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), who has been jailed for a year without charge after helping produce a high-profile manifesto calling for sweeping democratic reforms in China, a lawyer said yesterday.

The development moves Liu one step closer to standing trial and ends months of anxious uncertainty for his family and supporters.

Police extended their investigation of Liu three times over the past year — China's legal limit.

Lawyer Shang Baojun (尚寶軍) said the report presented by investigators alleges Liu incited to subvert state power with several essays he posted online and by helping produce Charter 08, an appeal for more civil rights in China and an end to the Chinese Communist Party's political dominance.

“This marks the end of the investigation phase and the beginning of the prosecution phase,” Shang said.

Prosecutors have about a month to examine the report and accompanying evidence and decide whether it is sufficient for a trial.

There have been numerous international appeals for Liu's release, including one last December signed by famous writers Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer and Umberto Eco. The latest development is likely to trigger a new round of lobbying on his behalf.

The investigator's report was handed over to prosecutors on Dec. 1, Shang said, but he was not given a copy until yesterday morning.

Beijing routinely uses the charge of subversion to imprison dissidents. Shang said Liu could face up to 15 years in jail.

Liu, a former university professor who spent 20 months in jail after joining pro-democracy protests in 1989, was taken away by police on Dec. 8 last year, a day before the charter was made public, and held at a secret location for six months.

He was formally arrested in June.

In other news, China said yesterday police had detained 94 people who fled the western region of Xinjiang after deadly rioting there in July — the country's worst communal violence in decades.

China continues to pursue and punish people involved in the violence, which it says left more than 200 dead, most of them from the majority Han ethnic group.

As of Friday, China has handed down 17 death sentences over the rioting.

A month-long “strike hard” campaign last month caught the latest 94 people, police in Xinjiang said.

A woman who answered the phone in Xinjiang's police office said no further details were available, including how many of the 94 were Muslim Uighurs and how many were Han. The woman gave her surname as Li.

Government should come clean on agreements: DPP
　

By Jenny W. Hsu
STAFF REPORTER
Thursday, Dec 10, 2009, Page 3

“The government convinced the public that by signing this agreement, many of Taiwan’s white-collar criminals who have absconded to China would be repatriated. I would like to ask President Ma Ying-jeou to name at least one major white-collar criminal that has been sent back to Taiwan since the signing.”— Chen Ting-fei, DPP legislator

The government must closely scrutinize the impact of cross-strait agreements signed to date before the fourth cross-strait meeting later this month, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, adding that if the government was going to “cheat” the public as it did in the three previous talks, then it should cancel the meeting.

The fourth meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yun-lin (陳雲林), is scheduled to take place in Taichung.

While pan-blue leaders have welcomed the planned meeting as a crucial step toward improving cross-strait relations, the pan-green camp has vehemently opposed to the visit and plan to stage a mass protest on the eve of the meeting.

DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said one of the agreements signed six months ago was on joint efforts to fight crime.

“The government convinced the public that by signing this agreement, many of Taiwan’s white-collar criminals who have absconded to China would be repatriated. I would like to ask President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to name at least one major white-collar criminal that has been sent back to Taiwan since the signing,” she said at a press conference.

Speaking about an agreement on food safety that was signed in November last year at the first Chiang-Chen meeting, Chen said the government had insisted that it would enable the 12 Taiwanese companies who lost money because of Chinese-made tainted milk powder to seek NT$700 million (US$22 million) in compensation.

“So far, none of the victims has received a dollar, only a short apology note from ARATS,” she said.

When Ma tried to sell the idea of opening Taiwan to Chinese tourists, she said, he promised the policy would greatly boost the tourism industry and that at least 3,000 Chinese tourists will visit per day.

“But the reality is that since January we have only seen a daily average of 1,307 Chinese tourists,” she said. “Moreover, we have seen an 11.53 percent drop in Japanese tourists and an 18.2 percent decrease in overall tourist visits.”

She urged the government to come clean with the public and stop lying about the ineffective and possibly damaging aspects of the cross-strait agreements.

If the fourth Chiang-Chen meeting will only yield more deception, she said, it should be scrapped altogether.

In related news, the 1221 Action Alliance (行動聯盟), a group of more than 10 pro-localization groups from central Taiwan, including the Central Taiwan Society (CTS, 台灣中社), held a press conference in Taichung yesterday morning. CTS head Chen Wan-te (陳萬德) said the alliance had three basic demands: Any negotiations concerning Taiwan and China should be conducted on a state-to-state basis; the nature of the agreements should be monitored and reviewed by the legislature; and anything involving the public interest should be put to a referendum.
　

Legislator raises specter of academic ‘brain drain’
　

By Shih Hsiu-chuan
STAFF REPORTER
Thursday, Dec 10, 2009, Page 4

“It is the government’s declared policy to recognize educational qualifications from China. It would be far-fetched to claim that the policy is made to serve specific people.”— Government Information Office

Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said yesterday that to avoid a brain drain, the government should set a limit on the number of Taiwanese allowed to study in China after its policy to recognize Chinese college degrees comes into force.

Speaking at the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, Kuan said that Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) son has a doctorate in law from China’s Tsinghua University.

“This proves that holding a degree from a Chinese university is seen as valuable. If the country recognizes Chinese certificates, many students will be tempted to go to China,” Kuan said.

The Government Information Office said in a press release yesterday that while Wu’s eldest son has studied at Tsinghua University in Beijing, it is not true that his second son earned a master’s degree in China.

“It is the government’s declared policy to recognize educational qualifications from China. It would be far-fetched to claim that the policy is made to serve specific people,” the letter said.

Kuan told Vice Minister of Education Lin Tsung-ming (林聰明) that the government should raise the matter during cross-strait talks between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.

“The government said it would set a series of restrictions on Chinese students who want to study in Taiwan to avoid jeopardizing the education system. Likewise, the SEF should ask China to set some conditions. For example, it shouldn’t offer lucrative scholarships to attract Taiwanese students,” Kuan said.

The Ministry of Education announced on Monday that it would hold 17 seminars around Taiwan from tomorrow until Dec. 23 to explain the government’s plan to recognize Chinese diplomas and open tertiary education institutes to Chinese students.

A ministry spokesman said the first seminar would be held in Kaohsiung and the last in Taipei.

He said the ministry was planning to gradually recognize diplomas issued by more than 100 elite Chinese universities in three stages — 41 top universities in the first stage, 55 in the second stage and an as-yet undecided number in the third stage. Police and military higher education institutes would be excluded.

In addition, he said, the ministry was considering making the policy retroactive to 1997, but would pay attention to public opinion on the matter, as there fears that the measure could affect the local job market.

The ministry has said that Chinese graduates must leave the country within a month of completing their studies and would not be permitted to work in Taiwan.

In terms of the maximum number of Chinese students allowed to pursue studies in Taiwan, the ministry said the number will be about 1 percent of the total number of every year’s freshman intake, or about 2,000 annually.

Each university would be authorized to have a maximum of 2 percent of Chinese students enrolled at any one time.

The ministry intends to allow Chinese graduate students to pursue master’s courses at public universities, while private universities will only be permitted to enroll undergraduates.

One third of the nation are idiots

Thursday, Dec 10, 2009, Page 8

Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) has once again found himself in hot water and this time it is of his own making.

In an interview with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-friendly UFO Network on Tuesday, Wu said that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) cross-strait policy continued to abide by the principle of “no reunification, no independence and no war.”

“You don’t have the capability to unify [China] and you don’t want to be unified by it, nor are you capable of declaring independence, which would cause a split domestically, not to mention the possibility of danger from an external force,” he said, using his rhetorical skills to blur the lines and in the end not not say very much.

Then came the kicker: “Only irresponsible people or idiots would want to seek independence [for Taiwan].”

Soon afterwards, several pan-blue lawmakers pointed to the inappropriateness of Wu’s remarks, while pan-green lawmakers demanded that Wu step down. Others also asked if, from his comments, it followed that those who seek unification with China are “responsible and smart.”

A seasoned politician who has served several legislative terms, Wu has earned a reputation as a good talker. In a democracy like Taiwan, where freedom of speech is respected, everybody — officials included — is entitled to his opinion.

This, however, does not mean that Wu, the nation’s top administrative official, should feel free to speak carelessly and use offensive language to characterize people who don’t agree with him.

The main task of the premier is to draw up administrative policies that will benefit Taiwanese, regardless of gender, age, religious belief or political leaning.

Wu’s indiscretion comes at a time when the KMT’s image is suffering, but this insult affected more than just a few people.

A poll released by Global Views magazine in October showed that 29.3 percent of people in Taiwan would support immediate and/or eventual independence, an increase of 3.9 percent from a similar poll conducted in May. Those who supported immediate or eventual unification with China remained fixed at 8.3 percent. In other words, if we look at the world through Wu’s eyes, about 30 percent of Taiwanese are idiots, while the more than 50 percent who support the “status quo” could be regarded as mildly retarded.

Ma has himself stated on several occasions that “Taiwan’s future must be decided by Taiwan’s 23 million people.” Furthermore, following the KMT’s less-than-stellar showing in the local elections on Saturday, Ma, who doubles as party chairman, said that all party members should show humility and think about what went wrong. Surely, insulting a large swath of the electorate was not part of his plan.

Dogged by reporters and unyielding at first, Wu eventually admitted that his comments were inappropriate and that he wished he had never made the reference to “idiots.” He then apologized.

Apology accepted, but this man of many words might profit more from being silent when he feels like saying the first thing that crosses his mind. Lots of voters, and the KMT, would be thankful.