DEMOCRACY:Lin Chia-lung said that the DPP’s plan to set up a China affairs committee and a party-to-party platform would be a good start
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should participate in China’s peaceful transformation by adopting a strategy that promotes positive engagement and democratic values, a DPP lawmaker said yesterday.
As calls for reviewing the DPP’s China policy intensified after the party’s loss in the January presidential election, DPP Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said it was time for the party to actively engage Beijing.
“However, we should deal with the engagement based on democratic values, rather than engaging for engagement’s sake,” Lin said.
The party’s plan to establish a China affairs committee and a party-to-party platform of exchange would be a good start for dealing with Beijing with confidence, he said.
Collaboration with democratic powers, including Japan, the EU and the US, to make an impact on China’s peaceful transformation toward a democracy and paying attention to rights movements as well as civil society in China would be even more important, he said.
Such a strategy would help the DPP in distinguishing between China’s communist regime and its rising civil society, allowing it to play a more active role in the Chinese people’s fight for democracy, Lin said.
Lin cited two “symbolic” incidents as reasons why the DPP needed to change its mentality — the fall of disgraced Chinese official Bo Xilai (薄熙來) and the protest in the southern Chinese village of Wukan.
The incidents suggest that the power struggle within the authoritarian Communist regime could intensify and that the Chinese are hungry for more freedom, he said.
Lin began a 10-day trip yesterday to North America, where he would make speeches to Taiwanese Americans in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada.