Author: Chris Buckley, Amy Chang Chien and Lam Yik Fei
Published on: 04/12/2025 | 00:00:00
AI Summary:
Taiwan’s Opposition Leader, Once for Independence, Turns Toward China She says Taiwan must embrace its Chinese heritage to avoid war. Her critics say she wants to steer the island into Beijing’s orbit. Back in her days as a Taiwanese student activist, Cheng Li-wun gave fiery speeches urging the island to sever its Chinese bonds. Ms. Cheng turned her back on hopes of Taiwanese independence more than 20 years ago. She now says that Taiwan must accept that it is historically part of China or risk a devastating war with Beijing, which claims the island as its lost territory. The Nationalist Party has lost Taiwan’s past three presidential elections to the Democratic Progressive Party. Taiwanese security officials say evidence indicates the Chinese Communist Party gave her campaign a lift. Ms. Cheng dismissed the allegations as sour grapes. She is now trying to prepare the Nationalists to take on the Democratic Progressives in local elections next year. Wu Cheng, a spokesman for the Democratic Progressives, said she was “turning a blind eye to China’s clear aggression against Taiwan and instead blaming the victim, Taiwan” Ms. Cheng was born to a Nationalist soldier from China and a Taiwanese mother and grew up in southern Taiwan. In 2005, she joined the Nationalist Party, deciding that it offered the only realistic path for defusing tensions with Beijing. She accompanied the then-party chairman, Lien Chan, on an ice-breaking trip to China in 2005, the first visit there by a party leader since 1949. Now, as head of her party, Ms. Cheng has said she is willing to meet China’s leaders. Despite decades of evidence on the toxic effects of lead battery recycling, car companies opted not to act and blocked efforts to clean up the industry. Eritrean mother and nurse tried to self-deport to Canada.
Original: 1561 words
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Percent reduction: 80.85%