LOS ANGELES - Lee Teng-Hui, former president of Taiwan, recently completed a whirlwind two-week tour of the United States to bring attention to the tenuous state of democracy in Taiwan and its very survival as a separate sovereign state.
He emphasized the risks Taiwan and other free nations face from a tyrannical China who would like nothing better than to take complete control and strip the small island nation of its current freedoms and democratic form of government.
On October 21, 2005, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles, the vibrant octogenarian Lee, in a strong and confident voice, presented his plan for a strategy of freedom in Asia. His plan calls for a quick rise of cooperation among free democracies against the communist military hegemony of China.
Lee stated emphatically that "The Battle between Slavery and Democracy has shifted to Asia," near the end of his presentation before a luncheon crowd of about 100 and a good number of media representatives. He made a number of references and specific examples as to how China uses slave labor to attract, like a powerful magnet, business investments from countries all over the world. He said that we are witnessing "the abrupt rise of China, the last major bastion of communist dictatorship and so this region (Asia) takes center stage in the final confrontation between freedom and tyranny."
Lee continued, "This emergence of China has captured the public's attention throughout the world. Everyone is asking: Will China's rise be a peaceful one or will it be based on military force? The answer to this question is very simple.
If China terminates its one party communist dictatorship and opts for constitutional reform that includes freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, the new China will be a peaceful country. If the contrary is true however, and China insists on maintaining its one party despotic dictatorship, if it continues to exploit and suppress its people at home and expand its military threats against its democratic neighbors, then China will retain its current status and we will continue to witness the rise of a militarist hegemony."
The complete text of Lee's speech can be found at www.formosafoundation.org.
Lee was Taiwan's first freely elected head of state, serving as president from 1988 to 2000. He paved the way for political reforms in the nation by peacefully transforming the totalitarian regime into a democracy. Lee remains highly regarded in Taiwan for his leadership towards building and solidifying the sovereignty of Taiwan.
In a previous exclusive interview with The Epoch Times on October 20, Lee mentioned several times his thoughts about the eternal question of "What is a human being?" Lee's preoccupation of what a human being is can be easily understood when one contemplates the challenges that Taiwan is currently facing.
China is developing into a big bully in the shrinking, Asian world neighborhood, with no morals to guide it, and seemingly no country to check it. It only fears raw power and its own paranoia, not its lack of humanity. Its booming surface economy helps hide its fundamental underpinning of evil communism and its weak internal infrastructure. China intimidates countries to ignore its abhorrent human rights abuses by threatening to cut off lucrative short-term investments and use of ridiculously cheap slave labor.
Contrast this with the small nation of Taiwan that desperately wants to hold on to its precious freedoms and sense of morality that makes human beings human. The odds don't look good except for hope, that in the end, good triumphs over evil.
In his heart, this is what Lee Teng-Hui was appealing to in his tour of this bastion of freedom, the United States of America. He was appealing to the sense of justice, and the love of freedom and mankind, that still exists among some leaders in this country.
This great leader of men and women wants the leaders in our own great country to reflect on what makes us human and to do what is necessary to protect humanity and the human spirit, wherever it is threatened.
Humans cannot flourish and reach their potential where there is no freedom, no dialogue. Lacking this environment for growth, they become introverted, fearful, with no hope for the future, and even more selfish than they would have ever imagined themselves to become. When finding oneself in a polarized nation where the side of good is almost impossible to reach and where critical dissent is absolutely discouraged, only a lucky few are able to rise above these cruel and unnatural barriers.
The true nature of the Chinese Communist Party is described in detail in the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party. With more than seven million Chinese renouncing their Party membership, this must read book is circulating in growing numbers in China, and can be accessed in more than 20 languages at http://ninecommentaries.com
The question one would naturally ask is, do we have the strength of conviction and leadership here in the U.S. that would do what is necessary to protect the freedoms in Taiwan and prevent the spread of tyranny in Asia? Was Lee's trip to the states in vain or helpful for the Taiwanese? Some hints to the answers of these questions are provided in a speech by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and interview answers by Rohrabacher and well-known political analyst Bruce Herschensohn.
Rohrabacher's International Relations Committee Responsibilities Regarding China
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher represents California's 46th District that stretches along the Pacific coastline of Orange County and Los Angeles from Huntington Beach to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Some of his current responsibilities as listed on his website include Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee. He is characterized as a forceful spokesman for human rights and democracy around the world. One of his first priorities includes looking into Chinese proliferation of nuclear weapons technology.
As a senior member of the International Relations Committee, Rohrabacher led the effort to deny Most Favored Nation trading status to Communist China, citing the nation's dismal human rights record and opposition to democracy.
Rohrabacher said that he had just left the meeting with the president of the United States at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley to be with former president Lee Teng-Hui.
Rep. Rohrabacher's Speech
Following is the complete text of Congressman Rohrabacher's speech:
"I left that meeting to come here to honor President Lee, that shows you just what high esteem someone who holds freedom in their hearts has for President Lee and for the role that he has played and continues to play in our world.
I see Bruce Herschensohn there, he is the one that takes these ideas and presents them to people in a way that affects our society and he has done so much for the cause of freedom, you should be here, this is where you should be with President Lee."
President Bush in his speech at the Reagan Library was talking about how communism has indeed been relegated to the dustbin of history. What will history say about those people and what will history say about those people who were telling Ronald Reagan that he couldn't do what he had intended to do and that he was a trouble maker, and that he was doing things that would destabilize the peace. Those people that gave him bad advice, they will go to the dustbin of history too. They will be forgotten. But it is the President Lees, it is the Ronald Reagans, it is the Margaret Thatchers, it is the Pope John Pauls, it is the champions of people who stood for principle and said we will change the world and make it better. They are the ones who will be remembered by history as heroes. And I am so pleased that I have had the honor to meet several of them, and I will tell you that President Lee is very high on that list of heroes of human freedom.
And when the history books are written and we analyze the way things went the way they did, the march towards democracy in Asia will start in Taiwan with President Lee and his peaceful ascension to democracy in that island. God bless President Lee! (loud applause) It is time to melt down all of the statues whether on the mainland or on Taiwan of Chang Kai-Shek and Mao Tse-Tung, those were not the heroes that created a better future. Chang Kai-Shek and Mao Tse-Tung were not the ones who will lead Asia to a better life.
Melt those statues down and turn the parts that they have now dedicated to those monstrous statues into memorials for those who died for the cause of freedom and furthered the cause of freedom, and instead, in Taipei, I would suggest that we have a statue of President Lee instead of Chang Kai-Check (loud applause). And see, I am a trouble maker too (laughter). So I was very honored to be a speech writer for President Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan taught me a great deal. I understood that this love of freedom that was in his heart, was part of his soul, that's one of the reasons he succeeded is that he projected, projected a love of humanity, that comes with human freedom. And I will say that having gotten to know President Lee, whenever I go to Taiwan, I always go to see President Lee. You can see that in his heart as well. What a wondrous gift that God gave us, that we have men like Ronald Reagan and President Lee, people like this in our lifetime, to help change the world and make it better."
Congressman Rohrabacher was asked if the President and the U.S. government have backed off on asking China to improve its human rights abuses. Rohrabacher responded, "I don't think we have backed off on it. I haven't backed off on it. I don't think we are enforcing as much as we should, but we have not backed off on the principles. The founding principles stay the same; we just have not been enforcing it."
In Part II of this two part series Political Commentator Bruce Herschensohn shares his views.
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