Zitat des Tages über Taiwan:
I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned.
But now all of a sudden some idiots in Taiwan start to say that they are not Chinese. Their grand parents were Chinese. But for some reason, they feel they are not Chinese.
Free nations of the world cannot allow Taiwan, a beacon of democracy, to be subdued by an authoritarian China.
China is a great manufacturing center, but it's actually mostly an assembly plant. So it assembles parts and components, high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial - more advanced industrial centers - Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Europe - and it basically assembles them.
Taiwan's democracy has grown very fast and we enjoy a certain degree of freedom, as other developed democracies like the United States.
Everybody told me that Taiwan is a very polite society and that people don't like gossip and scandals here. But they just pretend they don't like it. We have, by far, the biggest newspaper in Taiwan. They just buy it to read it at home.
Secondly I would like to make continuous efforts of stabilising cross Strait relations, eventually reaching peace across the Taiwan strait and stability and security in the Asia Pacific region.
Moreover, as we live in an era of the ascendancy of democracy and human rights, we must see that Taiwan has been a vibrant democracy with a democratically elected president and legislature.
We will work toward maintaining the status quo for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait in order to bring the greatest benefits and well-being to the Taiwanese people.
Gender used to be a barrier for women to overcome if they wanted to be in politics, but today in Taiwan the situation is somewhat different. I think there is even a preference for a woman candidate, and in local elections, we have seen that younger, better-educated female candidates are overwhelmingly preferred by the voters.
Back in eighth grade, I'd seen nothing but small-town Georgia when I left the U.S. for the first time and went to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China.
I never considered the clothing business in college. But my father was a manufacturer of men's wear in the Northeast and wanted to investigate manufacturing in Asia. In 1972 he sent me to Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong for four months. I'm convinced it was his way of getting me into business, rather than letting me be a hippie.
Ultimately, China may use force to push for unification with Taiwan, a scenario we all must work to prevent.
And it's difficult for the average American to understand why something like that could be so important and why a little small place like Taiwan would be so important to the PRC.
A war in the Taiwan Strait would destroy China's international relations overnight. It would destroy Chinese - Japanese relations, not to mention Chinese - American relations.
The election of the nationalist Chen Shui-bian as president in 2000 and his re-election in 2004 was a nadir in the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland.
We ask them to remove the missiles deployed against Taiwan, give up their military threat, and instead let us together open the door to cross-Strait peaceful and stable dialogue and negotiations.
When I was in Taiwan, I was taught in school that Taiwan is part of China.
So, anything that avoids a conflict that could draw in, unhappily again, outside powers such as the United States or revisit, for example, Japan's interests in the Taiwan area would be the last thing that anyone would want.
As Taiwan's friend and ally, I believe it is important for the United States to monitor the situation in the Taiwan Strait very carefully to help ensure Taiwan is not forced into a position which would endanger its freedom or its democracy.
We had Taiwan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Oman open their markets to our beef, and we're excited about that.
The election is over, and even though there are people who have different ideologies and beliefs, from now on we must all embrace each other, creating a harmonious and unified new Taiwan through our love and tolerance.
I love my family, I love my relatives. One special request I have is for the media back in Taiwan to kind of give them their space because they can't even go to work without being bombarded and people following them.
We will make every effort to unify all ethnic groups, to strengthen belief in Taiwan and to persist in reform.
The original communitarianism of Chinese Confucian society has degenerated into nepotism, a system of family linkages, and corruption, on the mainland. And remnants of the evils of the original system are still found in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even Singapore.
Facebook is blocked in mainland China, but is used heavily by the rest of the Chinese-speaking world, including Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.
Taiwan politics certainly is colorful.
Six months after that, I left Taiwan, first for Hong Kong and then for mainland China, where I spent another three months studying still more Chinese and generally kicking around the country.
We will never allow anybody to separate Taiwan from China.
Taiwan is a major economy.
Even if I were knocked down by one gunshot it wouldn't affect our democracy and I wasn't knocked down and I have great confidence in our democracy and in Taiwan and in the people of Taiwan.
But if the Chinese mainland, the PRC, attacked Taiwan, we'd be obligated to come to their aid.
Taiwan is a budding democracy, and the people have participated in multi-party democratic elections since 1996.
The PRC is the big brother in this relationship, and it has the capacity to be generous to Taiwan on this issue in a manner that might do much to defuse that issue internally in Taiwan.
We stand with the people of Taiwan and their democratic ways, and I am proud to be a part of reaffirming the unwavering commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act by the United States Congress.
I think that there is a relatively small number of people who are pushing for independence in Taiwan.
