A Quote by Nick Lampson
Free nations of the world cannot allow Taiwan, a beacon of democracy, to be subdued by an authoritarian China.
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The majority of Taiwan people cannot accept Taiwan becoming a second Hong Kong, nor can we accept Taiwan becoming a local government of the People's Republic of China or a Special Administrative Region of China.
We recognize Taiwan as the beacon of Asian democracy.
It can be argued - and rightly - that Taiwan is not just another regional issue: after all, the Chinese regard it as part of China. But Taiwan is also a regional issue for three reasons. First, the overthrow or even the neutering of democracy in Taiwan, which is what Beijing effectively demands, would be a major setback for democracy in the region as a whole. Second, if the Chinese were able to get their way by force in Taiwan, they would undoubtedly be tempted to do the same in other disputes. And third, there is no lack of such disputes to provoke a quarrel.
In the short term, it would not have made it possible to resume relations, because in the Chinese mind, the humiliation of China started with the annexation of Taiwan by Japan. If the United States had suddenly declared Taiwan as a separate state - for which we would have had no support among other nations - the consequences would have been giving up our relationship with China and committing ourselves to a long-term conflict with China.
We have to convince mainland China that a free and democratic Taiwan is more in China's interest than reunification.
The defining issue is that the government in Taiwan was considered to be the government of all of China, and the authorities in Beijing were not recognized as a government of China. So Taiwan was the residuary for all of China.
We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.
Mr. Speaker, in seeking to return to the United Nations, the Republic of China on Taiwan will once again ask diplomatic allies to present its case before the United Nations this fall.
We will never allow anybody to separate Taiwan from China.
As Taiwan's friend and ally, I believe it is important for the United States to monitor the situation in the Taiwan Strait very carefully to help ensure Taiwan is not forced into a position which would endanger its freedom or its democracy.
What China would do, I cannot predict. China has all but given up the claim to the use of force, except in the circumstance of Taiwan declaring its independence. That is a huge step forward over what the situation was many years ago.
The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies.
When I was in Taiwan, I was taught in school that Taiwan is part of China.
No one can take away the experience of Yeltsin's freedoms, but Russian democracy will never follow Western models: other authoritarian 'controlled democracies' - Turkey, Taiwan, Mexico - ultimately developed into democracies. But it took decades.
China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.
I think that my emergence as a leader is closely related to the development of Taiwan's democracy. Taiwan's democracy was a gradual development. It was done from the bottom up. Therefore a lot of the more successful political leaders come from civil society, those that are closer to the grass-roots level of the public.
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