A Letter of Protest

To one Chinese nation: I salute you, China, ancient and wise nation of old and Taiwan (ROC) in particular - peace be with you and all your generations:



I condemn in the strongest way possible the continuing violence against my compatriots in your territory. I do not think I can watch idly by while my countrymen and women are presently subjected to the pain and duress of this unjust threat that looms over their citizenship with me.

They have absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand and do not deserve to suffer for its evil - an evil we can only together attempt to address that it may withdraw its foul presence from the peace of our region, sooner than later.

These are our citizens, human beings who have sought in good faith to apply for and to work an honest job within your economy under your nation's patronage and your government's protection.

Rest assured we will honor our obligations to shelter and protect your citizens or any other citizens from any nation who came in peace to the shelter of our Republic, and uphold their human rights within our territory not because it is expedient or "politically correct" to do so right now but because it is only the natural way of things for this nation and so it shall be this way for my Country till the end of time - peace embraced with peace: It is only right and just.

Are we not a democracy? Both of us know the strengths and weaknesses of our chosen system. Right now, the effects of your lack of action to shelter the innocent in your care and protection is weakening what reason now prevails, both in the popular and in the political domain, that preserve those courses of action that will allow us to peaceably and responsibly resolve this unwanted and unneeded sea row, an issue now necessary and vital to our mutual national concerns and freely determining from what is true and what is not, how to effectively proceed.

I do not know the source of your belligerence and am admittedly still confounded by it. I hold no memory in my remembrance of our history of a division like this ever plaguing our peoples.

Yet as I seek to be prudent with what is weak in our systems, I trust also in the strengths of democracy as I must and so should advise you now most urgently that your failure to address the safety concerns of my compatriots in your care is stymieing the process instead of helping it.

None of us can resolve this issue on our own, only together - empowered in our will by the good will of both our peoples - can we run the gauntlet that will bring our Countries back into the fold of the peace our peoples have always steadily and quietly enjoyed.

Let us return again to the root of your passionate protests and know that we are just as passionate a people as you are in loving and protecting our own. I know that in this regard we both agree, we must truly love our peoples. And do so because both our nationhood hold to the truth that all human life, with all its foibles and vulnerabilities is of precious value and unlimited potential, each endowed equally and individually with natural rights and that this is the reason we are both a work of freedom; a democracy - to unleash in our citizenry the creativity, greatness, and nobility of the human potential and to protect and preserve their life and dignity.

I believe if we reflect upon this thinking more deeply, we will understand each other. We will understand as I do now hope we understand - that each human life to us is sacred - that you may feel how we too value our own and so understand the reason I must appeal in this protest to your reciprocal sense of civic solidarity:

Please extend to my people under the shelter of your care, the safety and the respect they deserve.

I am truly sorry for your loss, I truly am. Please, I humbly implore you - let us work now to reverse the tide.
I am just as eager for justice to give adequate redress to your sense of loss - to unveil the truth, properly compensate Hung Shih-cheng's next of kin, and pay the debt of remembrance both our nations now owe your deceased compatriot by recognizing in the living memory of his hope and the pain of his family and friends the present need to strengthen the mechanisms and institutions that work to help prevent similar tragedies from reoccurring, safeguard the integrity and completeness of the laws that serve to govern, protect, and conserve our seas and its riches, and affirm the peace both our sovereign peoples have always enjoyed together.

I believe agreements may only be made from seeds born from common understandings. Furthermore, I believe we are able to reach these understandings because we are simply born from the same spirit and that this seeking to freely allow truth itself to prevail - because truth ultimately will - is simply part of our strength as a democracy. For I do believe in us and desire for both our nations along with all our kindred nations, a future worthy of our common humanity.

Thank you so much for your patience. I am hopeful you will receive with reason and compassion, my most sincere and humble letter. God bless us all.

Mabuhay!
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UPDATE 20130527: Thank you, Mayor Hau Lung-pin - for being one of the first who stood up for peace and sanity between our peoples - peace be with you - Mabuhay, Taipei!

Our Divided Pond

"While the tree craves calm, the wind will not subside." This is a proverb the PRC media frequently quoted last year when commenting on the rifts between the PRC and the Philippines over the South China Sea.



Our only fault is not having a credible air-sea military deterrent to enforce our core national interests concerns within our territorial waters as well as the primacy of our economic interests within our own EEZ's alongside our international legal obligation to keep these outlying waters secure from piracy and free from lawlessness.

I always come back to this weakness in our own national defense when I ponder on the bilateral equation between the PRC and the GPH.

We did not unilaterally draw these lines on the map, we accepted them from the community of nations. We accepted them along with the rights and responsibilities that our nation must undertake along with them.

We did not harass the Chinese fishermen (PRC) in Scarborough shoal in April of last year, we were enforcing our maritime laws as we should - not because "we can" but because as a Republic, we must.

After all what is a Republic without law but a sham against the people and a lie against the nation it is commanded by God to shepherd.

But what is law without the truth? For the former arises out of the latter and drives it constantly against its limits, not to destroy it but to make it perfect.

But what is the truth? It is - in its ultimate form - certainly not a thing that Man may create for himself, else all law become void and the universe itself unmade.

It seems to me that when the truth is made to be arbitrary, as it is with Beijing's insistence on keeping all claimants cornered, regardless of the avenues of international legal remedy, it all will boil down in the end to raw force and in this regard, the time is late.

We have to accept responsibility for what we presently lack and build upon it in a way that is befitting the necessary and the real. And we must do this not for anything else but our own true sense of well regard for this Republic undertaking of Country of ours and our love for our nation as a whole.

We have to be firm in the right. Defend where we can and get our own act together as one Republic whole. The elections this year affords our people a chance to act upon our national longings, one of them being to live in the safety and security not only of our own peace but also with the peace of the nations in our region, their strength added to our own and ours with them.

We do not want to make an enemy of the PRC. I myself as a citizen of this Republic do not believe in enemies, for as a nation, it is my conviction that we must only believe in friends and potential friends. Not because we are weak for this is not a time to be weak. Now is a time for strength.

We must always be ready to answer to questions regarding matters of peace, whether they are of our own creation or is a thing created for us by circumstances within our world or through the dynamics involved in our necessary relations with other nations for we have constitutionally renounced the use of war along with all its potential for abuse.

This is not to say that we will not defend ourselves, this is to say that we must make it clear that our heart lies only in our defense and that we are answerable to the answers we as a nation have determined to allow for ourselves about these matters.

The real question is, has the PRC already made an enemy of us? Who is the tree and who is the wind?

Where there are more questions than answers, the truth is valued. When there are more answers than questions, there is no certainty.

The Code of Conduct, as I foresee it, being a document largely defined by the economic nature of the issue as regards the South China Sea-West Philippine Sea, must answer for our region - the question of wealth - is not peace and friendship between the nations in our region a form of wealth in and of itself?

Did not the Chinese also say that the angry can be made to be happy again but the dead can not be brought back to life? Indeed, not unlike this saying, I also place a high value on human life. This is why I place a high value on peace. For in its most complete and absolute form peace is truly over war.

Never must this issue take away our common hopes for a better Asia and from our Asia, a better world - for all nations... dreaming together this time.
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War is not the test,
O nations of the children of Mankind -
war is the tutor!

Peace is the test -
and to pass this test brings success.