台湾

If "Taiwan is not a state", the U.S. has the responsibility


Dennis Wilder, the senior director of East Asian Affairs on the US' National Security Council, recently said that " Taiwan is not a state." This has outraged and humiliated the Taiwanese people. But we also fe lt a sense of relief when he added that Taiwan issue has been left undecided for a long long time. The U .S. government has finally decided to face a fact that it has turned a blind eye to for half a century. The truth is: Taiwan is a country with 23 million people, who can freely elect their own leaders. We have the capacities to exercise our sovereign powers both domestically and on the international front. The US government?lt;/span> s refusal to recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state cannot challenge the reality that Taiwan has been a sovereign state for decades.

Moreover, if Taiwan is not a sovereign state in the eyes of US government officials, I must ask if the US has no responsibility for this situation? The 1952 San Fran cisco Peace Treaty that concluded World War II did not clarify Taiwan's status, and for a long time after, the US approved Chiang Kai-shek's brutal military occupation of Taiwan which imposed 38 years of martial law that left Taiwanese in darkness and isolation.

　 From the 1950s to the 1980s, tens of thousands of Taiwanese sacrificed their lives and freedom in their struggle to overthrow the dictatorship and to gain democracy and liberty . That heavy price was paid not only for the cause of democracy and freedom, but also because we longed to establish a new and sovereign state as the unavoidable conclusion to centuries of colonial rule and struggle for independence. I think this is something the American people can understand and identify with.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.? What the Taiwanese people have been striving for the past decades is the realization of nothing but this famous and courageous statement in the United States Declaration of Independence. With the consolidation of democracy in Taiwan, we feel proud to say that we have gradually advanced our causes.