Taipei, March 7 (CNA) Taiwan independence advocates expressed concern Friday about the younger generation's sense of history and identity, saying that young people took freedom and democracy for granted.
“It seemed to me that Taiwanese kids take freedom for granted,” said Coen Blaauw, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based pro-independence Formosan Association For Public Relations (FAPR) , who has been speaking at university campuses around Taiwan for the past two weeks. The FAPR is the public relations arm of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting international support for Taiwan's cause.
Blaauw, a Dutch lawyer who has been urging young adults to be proud of Taiwan in his speeches, observed that a lot of young people were confused about relations between Taiwan and China.
"They tended to think that it’s inevitable China will eventually take over Taiwan–just not in my lifetime, " Blaauw said in a press conference organized by Taiwan Society.
“Taiwan’s young people seemed embarrassed at their democracy, " Blaauw said, adding that Taiwan’s democracy is young and developing, however, and young people should speak out and be aggressive.
Jerome Keating, an American professor teaching in Taiwan who recently published a book titled "Taiwan: The search for identity, " agreed with the observation, saying that "the sense of history of the so-called‘strawberry generation’probably goes only 10 years deep."
Most of them didn’t know where Taiwan’s democracy came from because they were born after martial law was lifted in 1987, Keating said.
The scholar described himself as someone who thought the same as today’s young people, thinking that former Taiwan president Chiang Kai-shek was a nice guy when he arrived in Taiwan as a Taipei MRT engineer in 1988 soon after martial law was lifted.
A series of incidents aroused his interest for Taiwan's history, and Keating said he gradually realized that Taiwan’s history and identity were totally different from China’s.
Currently a literature professor at National Taipei University, Keating said that Taiwanese students should "go back and learn the real Taiwan history" so they know how to judge history in perspective.