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Ex-envoy to Japan
says Taiwanese lack sense of crisis
By Chang Mao-sen and Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter in Tokyo, with
staff writer
Taiwan’s gravest crisis is the lack of a sense of crisis among its people, who
are at a crossroads, faced with the choice of being annexed by China and living
under a one-party regime or continuing to be citizens of a free and democratic
nation, former representative to Japan Koh Se-kai (許世楷) said.
Koh made the remarks in a speech, titled “Taiwan’s Prospects: Seeing from the
Taiwan-Japan Ties,” at a public event in Tokyo on Sunday.
“If Taiwanese were to take the wrong path at the crossroad, they may experience
the bitter fruit of a new era of totalitarian darkness that their forebears
tasted in the past,” Koh said, adding that the nation’s fate depended on whether
“its people won the next [presidential] election.”
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration may appear to be leaning slightly
toward the US by signing a fisheries agreement with Japan in April to end
controversies over fishing in waters surrounding the contested Diaoyutai Islands
(釣魚台), but the president has not abandoned his attempts to bring Taiwan into
China’s fold, Koh said.
Former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had both sought to
put Taiwan on the road to internationalization, while Ma has not only denied
that cross-strait ties were “state-to-state” relations, but also endeavored to
turn Taiwan into an internal affair of China, Koh said.
“The Republic of China [ROC] that the Chinese Nationalist Party touts no longer
exists, and it is ironic and even preposterous that the Democratic Progressive
Party is the one left to shoulder the burden of a fictitious nation,” he said.
Koh also warned against Ma’s and former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung’s (吳伯雄)
repeated denials that Taiwan is a country, saying that such remarks would only
see the nation and its people reliving past misery.
“At a time when a majority of Chinese people do not wish to be born a Chinese in
the next life and hope to escape communist rule, why would anyone who already
live in a free and democratic nation like Taiwan be willing to be annexed by
China and ruled by a communist party?” Koh asked. “It is just unthinkable.”
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