The hundreds of students and demonstrators occupying the legislative chamber have issued a statement detailing their stance against the cross-strait service trade pact, stressing a demand for a fair and competitive future for young Taiwanese.
“We do not want to see young people still living on a NT$22,000 salary [a subsidization policy implemented by the government that gives NT$22,000 to university graduates as a starting salary] 10 years from now,” the statement read.
It said Taiwan is a haven for entrepreneurship, where young people can fulfill their dreams by opening coffee shops or personal workshops and become a “boss” by working hard on their own.
An academic assessment on the impact of signing the pact showed that more than 1,000 trades — covering basic necessities like food, clothing, housing, traffic and different stages of life from birth to death — will be affected, although the pact only listed 64 sub-sectors for opening up to Chinese investment, the students’ statement said.
“In the future, Taiwanese small and medium-sized enterprises will face challenges from competition with Chinese-invested companies that have abundant capital and use vertically integrated business models,” it said. “It will also threaten the survival of office workers, farmers, blue-collar workers and businesspeople.”
It said the pact would also impose a threat to the nation’s freedom of speech, by opening up Internet portal sites and Web sites, as well as printing, publishing and distribution channels to Chinese investment.
“Standing against the pact is not an act of ‘always being against anything related to China’ (逢中必反),” it said.
The trade agreement’s greatest problem is that it only benefits the large capitalists, by allowing big corporations to expand without limit across the Strait, while small businesses suffer, it said. “The entrepreneurship haven that we used to be proud of will be gradually taken over by foreign corporations.”
The statement said that the issue is not an argument between unification and independence, or between the pan-blue and the pan-green camps, but one between social classes — a harsh survival problem for young people when facing a few large companies that gobble up small businesses in the agricultural, industrial and commercial sectors.
“We strongly protest against the President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration — which now has a low approval rating — seizing the legislature to have it approve the service pact in such a violent way and giving away the nation’s future,” the statement said.
It also condemned what the students said was Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Ching-chung’s (張慶忠) sudden call on Monday to end a committee meeting and arbitrarily conclude that the review was finished and approved because of it was taking too long.
It said Chang’s conclusion was a total betrayal of the legislature’s promise to review the agreement item-by-item, which was agreed to in June last year.
“If the KMT can violently approve a pact that has great impact on the public by circumventing the legislature’s supervision and substantial review, other policies that might more greatly affect economic autonomy can also be approved in the same way,” it said. “Taiwan’s future cannot be forfeited like this.”
“We want to master our own future … we want a fair environment that allows young people to develop and compete,” the statement read.
The demonstrators are young people who are willing to take on challenges, but they will not abide unfair conditions that will lead them to being controlled by few ruling officials or large companies, it said.
“Taiwan is where we live and make a living,” the statement said in its last paragraph. “To stop this unfair and unjust service pact, to stop the political party that is trying to restore authoritarianism and is trampling our legal institutions, please stand with us and protect Taiwan together.”
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS