Tsai vs Hung on Tiananmen

A bridge rises from the waters

President Tsai Ing-wen posted a message on Tiananmen to her Facebook.... which the amazing Solidarity promptly translated in its entirety. A taste....

I believe mainland China is no exception. Today is June 4, and 27 years ago on this day, the Tiananmen Square incident occurred in Beijing. Because of it, many people lost their families; many people lost their hope for reform; and many people were forced to leave their hometowns and become exiles overseas. These were all things Taiwan too had experienced. That is why every Taiwanese person who saw those images on television 27 years ago felt empathy: Because we, too, had walked that path. We felt more clearly than anyone the thirst the students at Tiananmen Square had for democracy and freedom.

.......

As president, I won’t criticize the political system on the other side of the strait point by point. Instead I will express my willingness to sincerely and with my whole heart share with the other side of the strait the experiences of Taiwan’s democratization. The achievements of economic growth of today’s mainland China are apparent to everyone. With the effort of the ruling party on the other side of the strait, China’s citizens absolutely have a better quality of life than they did before. No one can deny this. Nor can anyone deny, however, that mainland China’s internal politics and society are currently under pressure to transform. If the other side of the strait can give the citizens of mainland China more rights, the people of the world will give mainland China more respect.

Hung Hsiu-chu, the former presidential candidate and current Chairman of the KMT, also had some thoughts on the June 4 Anniversary which she shared with the world. The Taipei Times reported...

“Putting aside the clashes in the past [between the Chinese Communist Party and the KMT], is the effort the KMT has made in Taiwan not also aimed at finding a better way to democracy and liberty for the children of zhonghua minzu?”

She called for a life full of “tolerance” and “respect” for all “Chinese children.”

“We have seen that the societies on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are walking toward this ideal. Since [China] has shown — different from before — its ability to be tolerant, could it then consider granting a more tolerant handling of this historical wound?” Hung wrote.

Former KMT spokesperson Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中) said “fury” is the only emotion he felt after reading Hung’s post.

He accused Hung of writing the post “with the tone of a lackey” who “begs for tolerance from the oppressor and the dictator.”

Yang also lambasted Hung for her “distorted understanding” of the historical connection between the crackdown and reform, claiming that hope for real, comprehensive reforms had all but been destroyed by the incident.

Hung's penchant for mentioning herself in public announcements appeared again...

我也曾是政治受難者的家屬，我是深深感受過那種遭到社會否定，有苦無處訴之痛苦的，但這並沒有影響我為國家，為民族奮鬥進取的決心. 如果我個人的際遇還可以作為某種啟示的話，我多麼希望大陸當局能夠以更大的寬容. 早日撫平這個存在於大陸社會與改革開放歷史中的傷口，讓這些承受歷史傷痛的人們，也有為民族奉獻自己的機會，也讓我們生活在台灣的中華兒女們，

I am also from a family that has suffered from politics. I deeply felt that society was negative, with no one to hear my bitter complaints of pain. However, it did not affect my determination to struggle for the [ethnic Chinese] nation. If my personal fate can serve as a kind of revelation....

In true hardline KMT style she subsumed the people of Taiwan into the Chinese nation:

也讓我們生活在台灣的中華兒女們

...to enable us Chinese children living in Taiwan to...

That's really the difference. In Tsai's presentation, the common yearning for democracy is the common ground of the peoples of Taiwan and China. In Hung's presentation, that common ground is the shared ethnicity, the Chinese nation of KMT ideology.

Sadly, Hung learned nothing from her father's experiences at the hands of the KMT.
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