Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday announced that she had picked former Academia Sinica vice president Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) to be her running mate in January’s presidential election.
“A few months ago, Chen joined a meeting of our think tank, during which I thanked him for helping out and told him I might need his assistance in the future. He was unaware of my hidden message then, but his name was put on a not-so-long list in my pocket,” Tsai told a news conference at the DPP headquarters in Taipei. “And today, I am here to welcome him to become my running mate and a member of my team.”
Tsai said that like most Taiwanese, she was most impressed by Chen’s willingness to take up a challenging mission, as well as his steady and calm leadership, during the SARS outbreak in 2003.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Describing Chen as a devout Catholic who is prudent, extroverted, trustworthy and an expert communicator, Tsai said many political analysts have praised him as conducive to her campaign.
“However, that is not the point. The point is that I genuinely believe Chen will be a beneficial choice to the nation as a whole,” she said.
In a speech filled with religious reflections, Chen said that when Tsai approached him about serving as her running mate, he was reluctant to give up his academic research and studies, which have been his lifelong pursuit.
“My wife and daughter then prayed for me. They felt God’s calling that I must become the light of the world and the salt of the earth, burning myself like a small candle to give light to Taiwan or making myself like a pinch of salt to add flavors to people’s lives,” Chen said.
Quoting Pope Francis, Chen said real power is service and that a good shepherd wears the smell of his flock, adding that the pontiff also encourages Catholics to enter politics so that they can bring change and attend to the needs of the impoverished and the disadvantaged.
“While [former Academia Sinica] president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) is reluctant to see me embroiled in the whirlpool of political struggle ... he is convinced that Tsai’s campaign policies are the most practical, feasible and favorable to Taiwan’s future,” Chen said.
Asked whether he now plans to join the DPP, Chen said he has yet to consider it, but he has cooperated with Tsai’s team for a long time.
Academia Sinica issued a statement earlier in the day announcing Chen’s resignation. It voiced regret at losing him, but extended its best wishes.
Born in 1951, Chen holds a doctoral degree in epidemiology and human genetics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in animal science and a master’s in public health from National Taiwan University. He began conducting research on hepatitis B when he was a teaching assistant at the Taipei school and later became a key proponent of across-the-board vaccination against hepatitis B, which is endemic in Taiwan.
The 64-year-old is also an expert on arsenic poisoning.
Since the late 1950s, a mysterious illness dubbed “blackfoot disease” has afflicted people in many areas along Taiwan’s southwestern coast. Chen and his research team discovered a link between the consumption of water with high levels of arsenic and increased risks of cancer and hardening of the arteries.
They also found that people drinking arsenic-laced water from deep wells suffered a higher death rate from bladder, lung, liver, kidney and skin cancers than those consuming water from shallow wells.
Chen played a leadership role in the Department of Health during the SARS outbreak, which killed 73 people and afflicted 346 nationwide.
He later worked to help establish a national infectious disease monitoring system and amend the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法) to improve the nation’s epidemic prevention and control capabilities.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats