We Shouldn’t Use Partisan Justice to Erase Taiwan’s Memories

  We Shouldn’t Use Partisan Justice to Erase Taiwan’s Memories

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

August 9, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

The China Youth Corps, which accompanied those born in the 50s, 60s, and 70s in traversing their green years of adolescence and popularized the wave of campus folk songs, was, following the National Women’s League, determined by the Ill-Gotten Party Asset Settlement Committee under the Cabinet to be a KMT-affiliated organization, possibly going into history. Nevertheless, these two organizations, like all agencies and personnel that followed the Nationalist Government to relocate to Taiwan, all witnessed how Taiwan experienced the tests and trials of gunfire of the “August 23^rd Artillery Duel,” and witnessed all the accomplishments and the bitter and sour of how all military and civilians painstakingly worked hard to revitalize Chinese culture and construct the bastion of revival. These are precious memories that all the population of Taiwan jointly traversed. The DPP should not believe that erasing these "affiliated organizations" and deliberately forgetting this page of history, it could delete the memories of the entire populace of Taiwan. Actively linking these arduous but glorious years is the emotional foundation of growth and centripetal momentum for Taiwan to march toward the future.

Looking back at the years since the 60s, every step that Taiwan has traversed has been without exception an arduous and perilous step, walking on the brink of a deep abyss and treading on thin ice. Without the Battle of Guningtou of 1949 and the August 23^rd Artillery Duel of 1958, and without the soldiers on the frontlines on Kinmen and Matsu who would make sacrifices to defend their homes and country, without the support of the local population of Kinmen and Matsu for the armed forces in the tests and trials of even the threat of death amid artillery fire, there would be no Taiwan of today. Without the great thinkers, teachers, technical personnel, and even Buddhist and Taoist masters, there would be no Taiwan of today endowed with the study of humanities and robust religions. Without the struggle of the veterans who retired from the military, there would be no picturesque cross-section highway or home-cooking delicacies of provincial cuisines that now permeate the towns and streets of Taiwan. From widespread illiteracy to accessible education, from handicrafts at home, assembling plastic Christmas trees, to high-tech manufacturing industries, in this history of Taiwan, nobody could sever the years that we jointly traversed, irrespective of provincial origins, geographical areas, or religious beliefs. Nor could anyone deprive the glory that the entire populace jointly took part in creating the Taiwan miracle.

The DPP deliberately pushed for transformational justice, pursued the KMT party assets and its affiliated organizations; this may satisfy the DPP’s "justice," but cannot expect, through unjust operations of executive power, to erase the Taiwan population’s memories and feelings toward China. On the contrary, the Taiwan population’s longing for the bygone years, following four decades of popular singing and broadcasting of folk songs, still remain vivid in memory with agitated emotion.

The two sides of the Strait are indeed an inseparable community of shared destiny, which will thrive or wither together. Whether cross-Strait peace and a win-win situation will be jointly created in the hands of this generation’s Chinese on both sides of the Strait depends on the DPP government in a flash moment.

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