A Double Ten National Day celebration yesterday organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) highlighted the significance and widespread presence of the national flag, and affirmed the existence of the Republic of China (ROC).
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government has been accused by critics of deliberately minimizing imagery associated with China by removing the ROC flag from the invitations for the official Double Ten National Day ceremony and dinner, as well as not mentioning the ROC.
However, Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), whose job includes the role of National Day Celebration Organizing Committee chairman, said the national flag “lives in our hearts,” adding that the flags were displayed at the ceremony and dinner.
Photo: CNA
The invitation to a celebration hosted by the KMT at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei featured a national flag on one side and the portraits of Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) on the other.
The ceremony began with marching bands carrying national flags and portraits of Sun and Chiang, which were followed by a group of veterans bearing a huge national flag.
In his speech to the ceremony, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) highlighted the differences between it and the national celebrations, saying that the number of national flags he saw in the afternoon far exceeded that of the official ceremony in the morning, which he had also attended.
“This is what a National Day celebration should look like. This flag has borne the ideas, feelings, struggles, humility and dignity of millions of Chinese people over the past 100 years. It has become the symbol recognized, affirmed and supported by 23 million people in Taiwan as well. Surely we should bring our national flags out and raise them high at important occasions like National Day celebrations,” Ma said.
Former KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) said “our love for the national flag and our use of the ROC as the name of the nation should not be hidden inside.”
“To us, addressing our nation as the ROC and respecting our flag is just as natural as facing the sun and walking on the land. We neither have to fabricate nor hide those feelings,” she said.
Former representative to the US Shen Lyu-shun (沈呂巡) said that he was invited to attend the pan-blue event because during his time in Washington the ROC flag was raised at Twin Oaks — the estate owned by the ROC government and used for official receptions —for the first time in 2015, 37 years after the US and Taiwan severed diplomatic ties.
KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said that seeing the national flag should strengthen the faith and reignite the hope of party supporters that the KMT would soon rule the nation again.
Wu asked KMT supporters to unite and work together to help it to win next year’s “nine-in-one” elections for special municipality mayors, county commissioners and city and county councils.
“Let our flags fly in more cities and counties than they do now. If we make significant progress next year, it would open up a chance for us return to power,” he said.
Ma said that he was deeply concerned with the direction in which the DPP administration is heading.
The KMT needs to seize any opportunity it can to convince the public that it has the most effective solution to achieve cross-strait peace and prosperity, he said.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
NUMBERs IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
RSS