OPINION

WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 2014 |A17

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Anti-CSSTA: Taiwanese Rescue Themselves

By He Qinglian
Since Ma Ying-jeou came to
power in Taiwan, Beijing has
regarded unity to be just
around the corner. Beijing
launching the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA)
with intent to pave the last
stone for unity between Taiwan and mainland China. But
unexpectedly when this pot of
boiling water was poured in,
due to its being too hot, some
of the frogs in simmering water
jumped out and began to rescue themselves.
The movement against CSSTA
in Taiwan was neither an
impromptu street campaign nor
the youth gathering and rushing impulsively, as claimed by
Chinas official media. Instead,
it was initiated by Taiwans academia, students, and the general
public based on their common

Taiwans youth
grew up in a
democratic society,
which gave them a
clear awareness of
their rights.
interest, implicitly including the
most important goal of defending Taiwans democracy.
Taiwans academic and civil
society institutions have long
noticed the effects of red
penetration while the helpless battle between the blues
(Kuomintang) and the greens
(Democratic Progressive Party)
have led Taiwans democracy
to a semi-paralyzed state, and
made Taiwanese feel hopeless. This time the CSSTA was
a tipping point that triggered
the Sunflower Student Movement because Taiwanese felt
that if they did not take action
immediately, Taiwan would be
stepping into the shoes of Hong
Kong, and Taiwans democracy
would be difficult to keep.
Chinas official media claimed
that the CSSTA is a win-win situation for China and Taiwan,
but because some Taiwanese did
not understand it completely,
they opposed it blindly and were
used by the Taiwan independ-

MANDY CHENG/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

ence forces. But this time what

they said has completely deviated from the real situation.
Taiwanese also did not believe
those claims, such as, Once the
CSSTA is passed, all the Taiwan's industries will collapse.
In the beginning, the Taiwanese peoples main reaction on
the CSSTA was The government lacked communication
and Too many big words were
used when the official explained
it, the more one listens, the more
confused one gets.
Beijing has prepared the
CSSTA for a long time and
has intentions with it. Due to
the CSSTA involving dozens
of industries, if there are no
experts to study both sides
industries and policies deeply,
it will be very difficult for people to realize its advantages
and disadvantages. Fortunately with the efforts of several National Taiwan University scholars, Taiwan people can
understand the CSSTAs potential harm to Taiwan.
To let everyone understand
the CSSTA, professors Cheng
Yuling and Chang Chinhua
in National Taiwan University strenuously analyzed it
clause by clause. With months
of effort, the report, How the
Pending Agreement on Trade
in Services Between China and
Taiwan Would Impact Taiwan's
Economy and Sovereignty
was published, providing professional analysis for the antiCSSTA movement.
Among Chinas political
opponents (including human
rights defenders), there are some
who are not well-educated and
tend to be against intellectuals.
Without a good understanding
of the democratic movement
and democratic system, they
usually exaggerated the significance of street protests, advocating Taking to the streets
rather than waiting and found
pleasure in abusing the public
intellectuals. The anti-CSSTA
movement of this time should at
least let them know that modern society is not the same as
the era of peasant uprisings
at the time the revolution was
simply defined as taking up long
spears or big knives. The saying Liu Bang and Hsiang Yu
[prominent rebel leaders who
overthrew the Qin Dynasty
over 2000 years ago] did not
read books does not work at
all for modern society

A protester holds sunflowers and wears a sticker of Taiwans national

flag on her face in support of student protesters occupying the Parliament building in Taipei on March 21.

Ease of Organizing
Democratic Youth
The political apathy of Taiwans
youth is due to being tired of
the struggles between the blue
and green parties. But they
grew up in a democratic society, which gave them a clear
awareness of their rights. If
you want to mobilize students
to participate in social movements in mainland China, at
first you need to get rid of their
Animal Farm consciousness
developed through years of
brainwashing, which believe
that You cannot making a living on democracy.
Taiwans students realized
that defending their rights
must be through social participation, and thus they threw
themselves into the anti-CSSTA
movement. Once they participate, the people of this generation can utilize the Internet efficiently, spreading information
and organizing various activities very rapidly.
For example, they published
widely popular articles on the
importance of free trade. In the
column, About the China Factor, six articles are included,
discussing the likelihood and
impacts of various Chinas
factors. For those who dont
understand the CSSTA, the
contents including The defects
on the process (five points),
The impacts on industries
(six points), Differences and
conflicts between generations,
and After the CSSTA, what we
need to do all have reference
and instructional values.
The anti-CSSTA movement
also created the Black Island
Nation Youth Front, launching
an anti-black-boxing CSSTA
street democracy classroom
to teach people common sense

about anti CSSTA; open the

anti-black-boxing CSSTA community on Facebook for posting
all kinds of information. In contrast with the Ma Ying-jeou governments official interpretation,
the opponents use simple network texts, graphics, and tables,
comics, and videos. They specifically listed all the phone numbers of Taiwans legislators on
the website and urged Taiwans
people to fulfill their civic duties
and rights, making calls to the
legislators and expressing their
attitudes against the CSSTA.
Significance for Taiwan
In recent years, due to the Ma
administration kowtowing
to Beijing, the trend of crossstrait unification is gradually
forming. While Taiwans young
generation enjoys the democracy and freedom that the older
generation fought hard for, they
do not know that due to many
restrains from the mainland
regime, guarding democracy
and freedom is not easy. This
CSSTA is like a barrel of hot
water on their heads that woke
them up, so that they begin to
act, to exercise their civic rights,
and to safeguard Taiwan.
The anti-CSSTA movement
has caused very strong reactions in Hong Kong. Democratic activist Li Yi used his
methods to remind the Taiwanese, Hong Kong was once
the example that Taiwanese
envied, today it is reduced to
a lesson that Taiwanese should
learn from. Other than the fact
that the CCP did not live up to
its promise of one nation, two
systems the most critical is that
many Hong Kong people did
not treat Hong Kong as their
home; they only cared about
making money and gaining

political and economic interests, but were unwilling to sacrifice economic interests for
public interests.
There is an illustrative photo
that has been widely circulating on the Internet. The photo
shows a young man from
Hong Kong wearing glasses
with a sign hanging from his
neck, which reads, Im a Hong
Konger, please step on our dead
bodies and thinking about Taiwans path. At the same time,
people in Hong Kong started
the Protect Democracy, refuse
black box: Hong Kong strongly
support Taiwan anti-CSSTA
campaign.
Major Divide in Mainland
Just like all protest movements,
the Taiwan anti-CSSTA movement has caused a major divide
among mainland Chinese
netizens. CCPs mouthpiece
media in Hong Kong like the
Wen Wei Po published posts
on Weibo saying anti-CSSTA
is not a fashion trend for the
Taiwanese youth. They try to
deny the consciousness and
political significance of antiCSSTA participants.
The Peoples Daily overseas
edition claims that CSSTA
would benefit Taiwan so much,
and hope that the opponents
do your homework well before
speaking. Then the Peoples
Daily article titled bad student movement reflect Taiwan political crisis claims,
The CSSTA is a win-win economic agreement for both sides,
if the effective dates keeps getting delayed, follow-up negotiations on the CSSTA will be
adversely affected. Facing such
great development opportunity,
but the Taiwanese economy
keeps getting dragged down
by populist politics, this is a
crisis for the Taiwanese economy, and also tragedy for the
Taiwanese politics. There are
even those who view the over
100 billion U.S. dollars trade
surplus between Taiwan and
mainland China as the benefit that mainland China is giving to Taiwan.
The above remarks gain quite
a lot of adherents who were usually sober. Many Chinese netizens express anger and dissatisfaction toward Taiwanese for
being ungrateful. This general attitude can be generally
summarized as, (We) gave
you so much benefits, but you

are not satisfied, and start this

anti-CSSTA. The root error in
such thought is the belief that
money can buy everything,
even a persons freedom, dignity, and civil rights all can be
forced to be given up after giving money. One saying that the
Chinese government often uses
during its maintain stability
campaign is Peoples internal
problem can be solved with
renminbi (mainland Chinas
currency). In a society dominated by such a mentality, its
very hard to truly understand,
Life is precious, love is even
more, but for freedom, both of
these can go.
While mainland China censors postings very strictly, there
are still many dissenting voices
that can be heard. My post
CSSTA: The last paving stone
before China and Taiwan turn
into one was widely circulated by Chinese netizens. After
it was posted on someones
Weibo, it was shared 80,000
times, and then it was quickly
censored. From peoples replies,
you can see that when people
understand why Taiwanese
are against the CSSTA, most
of them are supportive.
While these people never
visited Taiwan, but they have a
simple feeling, that the CCPs
totalitarian rule in mainland
lacks humanity, and people in
Taiwan shouldnt have to suffer through it. In their minds,
the establishment of democracy
in Taiwan was not only a win
for the Taiwanese people, but
also shattered the absurd saying
that, Democracy is not suitable for Chinese society.
Information cannot be
blocked in the age of Internet. I believe that Taiwans
anti-CSSTA movement gave
political dissidents in mainland China a great chance to
learn. In the areas of methods of organization, methods
of spreading the news, and in
trying to gain greater societal
support, there are many things
they can learn from the Taiwan
Anti-CSSTA movement.
He Qinglian is a prominent
Chinese author and economist.
Currently based in the United
States, she authored China's
Pitfalls, which concerns corruption in Chinas economic
reform of the 1990s, and The
Fog of Censorship: Media Control in China.

Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party

The Nine Commentaries is the book that is disintegrating the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and changing China.
This award-winning Epoch Times editorial series discloses the true history and nature of the CCP. Now it is serialized here.

Commentary
Five (cont.)
On the Collusion of
Jiang Zemin and the
Chinese Communist
Party to Persecute
Falun Gong
It is not clear yet how much of
the states economic resources
and the earnings from peoples sweat and toil the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) has
employed to persecute Falun
Gong. However, it is not hard
to see that it would be an enormous figure.

In 2001, information from

inside the Partys Public Security Department showed that,
at Tiananmen Square alone,
the expense of arresting Falun
Gong practitioners was 1.7
to 2.5 million yuan per day
(approximately US$249,000 to
US$366,000 at current exchange
rates), which amounts to 620
to 910 million yuan per year
(approximately US$90 million
to US$133 million).
In the whole country, from cities to remote rural areas, from
the police in police stations and
public security departments to
the personnel at all branches
of the 610 Office, Jiang Zemin
employed at least a few million
people to persecute Falun Gong.
The cost in wages alone may
exceed 100 billion yuan per year
(approximately US$14 billion).

Moreover, Jiang Zemin spent

huge amounts to expand forced
labor camps to detain Falun
Gong practitioners and build
brainwashing centers and bases.
For example, in December 2001,
Jiang Zemin expended 4.2 billion yuan (approximately US$615
million) to build brainwashing
centers and bases to transform
Falun Gong practitioners.
Jiang Zemin also used monetary incentives to stimulate and
encourage greater numbers of
people to participate in persecuting Falun Gong. In many
areas, the prize for arresting a
Falun Gong practitioner was
several thousand or even 10,000
yuan.
The Masanjia Forced Labor
Camp in Liaoning Province is
one of the most evil places in
the persecution of Falun Gong.

The Party once awarded Camp

Director Su 50,000 yuan and
Deputy Director Shao 30,000
yuan.
Jiang Zemin, the former general secretary of the CCP, is not
only the person who launched
the persecution of Falun Gong
but also the person who plotted
and commanded it. He utilized
the mechanisms of the CCP
to launch the persecution of
Falun Gong. He bears inescapable responsibility for this historic crime.
However, if there were no
CCP with its mechanism of
violence formed through many
political movements, Jiang
Zemin would have had no way
to launch and carry out the evil
persecution.
Jiang Zemin and the Party
make use of each other. They

risk everyones condemnation

to oppose truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance for the interests. of a person and a party.
Their collusion is the real reason why such a tragic and absurd
crime was able to occur.
V. Bringing Down the CCP
From the Inside
Motivated by his personal
interests, Jiang Zemin utilized
the inherent evil of the CCP
to launch the immense persecution aimed at innocent people who follow truthfulness,
compassion, and tolerance. He
launched a punitive movement
against a social force most beneficial and least harmful to the
nation and society. This persecution not only drags the
nation and people down into
crime and disaster, but also

QUITTING THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

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166,667,650 Quit
as of 5:55 p.m., 5/27/14

Thousands of Chinese people are quitting the Chinese

Communist Party and its afliate organizations every day
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ments on public walls and poles, or writing on banknotes.

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defeats the Party at its very

foundation.
Jiang Zemin utilized the Party
to employ relentlessly all manner of evil means all over the
world to eradicate Falun Gong.
Law, morality, and humanity
all suffered great harm, which
destroys at the root the regimes
legitimacy.
Jiangs regime employed all
available financial, material,
and human resources to persecute Falun Gong, which has
caused an enormous burden for
the nation and society and huge
pressure on the financial system. The Party has no way to
sustain the doomed persecution
for an extended period of time.
It can only use ordinary peoples
savings, issue national bonds,
and entice foreign investment
to keep the persecution going.

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