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| 2ND LEAD (Adds Report) Taiwan celebrates its centenary anniversary in Norway, Ban Ki-moon stays in nearby Hotel |
| [11.10.2011, 05:50pm, Tue. GMT] |
The "100th National Day of Republic of China" (Taiwan) was celebrated at Oslo’s Grand Hotel with approximately 250 people in attendance. Attendees included Norwegian politicians, Members of Parliament, Business people and Norwegian and Foreign Journalists. The event was held within walking distance of Norway’s Parliament Building.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was also present at Oslo’s nearby Plaza Hotel to attend the International Climate and Energy Summit. In remarks made in an exclusive press meeting with Norwegian Foreign Media on 10 October, the Secretary-General answered a question from a Norway News Journalist on his message to the 23 million people of Taiwan celebrating 100 years centenary anniversary “so-called independence.”
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon replied, “As you know the General Assembly of the United Nations has made the firm principle that Taiwan is part of People’s Republic of China and my policy has been based on that ….General Assembly’s Resolution. “ Many journalists said, "He sounds like he is China's permanent representative to the UN rather than the UN Secretary-General."
A Taiwanese Government Official reacted strongly to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s comments made at a Norwegian Press Conference, stating, "I regret that the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban was rigid, ignorant and politically-oriented as ever. I really cannot figure what has makes him believe that Taiwan is a province of China. There has never been such a resolution in the UN General Assembly. Although Taiwan wishes to be a member of the UN, Taiwan people are generally happy that we are not part of it giving its ineptitude."
People’s Republic of China known as CHINA government has never held jurisdiction over Taiwan and the United Nations has never taken a formal stance regarding the sovereignty of Taiwan.
Norway's Labour Government
Spurned by the international community, including Norwegian’s Labour Government, ignored in the land of its founding, and ridiculed by many of its own people, Taiwan celebrates the 100th anniversary of its birth Monday, trying to stave off extinction.
It seems a tall order for a regime that was born out of the ashes of China’s last imperial dynasty and that once ruled over the Chinese mainland. For the past 62 years, it has been confined to the offshore island of Taiwan.
The Republic of China’s longtime antagonist is the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, which, since Mao Zedong’s Communists defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists in 1949, has been committed to bringing Taiwan under its control.
Nobody expects the island of 23 million people to be subsumed into China in the near-term, but deepening economic ties are drawing Taiwan ever deeper into the orbit of its much larger neighbor.
Today, more than half of Taiwan's population consider themselves to be Taiwanese. That number has tripled in the past 20 years, and those who identify themselves as Chinese has shrank to single digits.
“In the long term the existence of the Republic of China is under threat,” said China specialist Yitzhak Shichor of Israel’s University of Haifa. “China is becoming more and more powerful and Taiwan’s dependence on it is increasing.”
So far, most of the interaction between the two has been economic. Since taking office 3 1/2 years ago, Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou has shepherded a series of commercial agreements aimed at linking Taiwan’s high-tech economy to China’s lucrative markets.
One payoff has been the lowest level of tension across the 100-mile- (160-km-) wide Taiwan Strait since Chiang Kai-shek’s desperate retreat from the mainland in 1949.
The policy has come under strong criticism from the Taiwanese opposition, which sees it as a step toward political integration with China. Ma denies that, but he has been vague about the end goal of his China policy, prompting speculation that he has accepted that union with the mainland may be inevitable at some point.
His government is marking the centenary of the Republic of China not on the actual date of its founding — Jan 1. 1912 — but 2 1/2 months earlier, on the 100th anniversary of an attack launched by rebels associated with revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen on a Qing dynasty garrison in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
After 60 years of separation from the mainland, the sense of Taiwanese identity has increased among most Taiwanese, who prefer to maintain the status quo with China.
The attack set the stage for the end of some 2,000 years of Chinese imperial history and raised hopes that China could emerge from a century and a half of national humiliation it had endured at the hands of foreign powers.
Public interest in the centenary is lukewarm. While most Taiwanese don’t want to come under China’s control, they also don’t see the events of 100 years ago as particularly relevant to their future. The media have barely acknowledged a series of heavily promoted government events in the run-up to Monday’s ceremonies, and the big day looks likely to pass with a minimum of fanfare — no more, at any rate, than in other years.
Leading the ranks of the disinterested is the opposition, which remembers with horror the martial law dictatorship that Chiang brought from the mainland — it persisted until 1987 — and associates it directly with the Republic of China.
The opposition’s main constituents are descendants of people who migrated from the mainland in the 17th and 18th centuries. Many of them reject any association with China in favor a culturally and politically distinct Taiwan.
A major stumbling block to integration is differing political systems: Taiwan has evolved into a democracy, and its people fear losing their hard-won freedoms under China, which remains a one-party state that crushes most calls for political change.
“Taiwan has become a leader in the Chinese world in aspects of freedom, democracy and openness, “ Ma said last December. “ Its achievements have been recognized by the international community and it can serve as a role model for all of Asia.
”
Even among Ma’s ruling Nationalists, many of whom trace their roots to those who fled in 1949, there is no unanimity on Taiwan’s future. Most want to continue Taiwan’s de facto independence indefinitely, while a small minority favor absorption by China, perhaps with a special status similar to Hong Kong’s.
Taiwan Urges China
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou urged China's government on Monday to pursue democracy and respect his island's self-governance as the two sides mark the centennial of a revolution that ended 2,000 years of imperial Chinese rule.
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