Professor and Chinese exile Yuan Hongbing will be speaking about China, Taiwan, the United States, and his new book, Taiwan Disaster, during his 10 city tour of the United States and Canada.
Seattle Presentation Details
Date & Time: Saturday 30 January 2010, 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM
Place: Culture Center of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Seattle
1008 140th Ave NE Suite 108, Bellevue, WA 98007
Details: $3 entry; light lunch provided
Contact: John Chou 206-365-8807
Yuan Hongbing 袁紅冰
Yuan Hongbing is an ethnic Mongolian jurist, novelist, and dissident from China.
Yuan was born 1953 in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. He graduated from Beijing University with a masters degree in criminal procedure in 1986 and went on to head the School of Criminal Procedural law at Beijing University.
Following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he came under notice of government authorities for his outspoken views. Yuan Hongbing has been active as a labour organizer and was involved with a “Peace Charter” reportedly modeled on the Czechoslovak Charter 77. In 1994 he was detained by government authorities and forced to leave Beijing, becoming one of China’s most prominent public dissidents. Yuan went into exile in the remote province of Guizhou, and became the Dean of the law school at Guizhou Normal University.
In 2004 he and his assistant Zhao Jing travelled to Australia, and on 28 July they sought political asylum. Three of his books were published overseas that same year: Elegy and Freedom at Sunset, both of which relate the sufferings of Mongols under Chinese Communist rule, and The Golden Holy Mountain, about Tibet. In June 2005 he spoke in support of defector Chen Yonglin, accusing the Chinese government of attempting to turn Australia into a “political colony”.
Yuan Hongbing’s newest book is Taiwan Disaster, which was released on Nov. 17 in Taipei, Taiwan. In this book, he discloses confidential findings on how the Chinese communist regime is determined to “unify” with Taiwan by 2012. Yuan maintains that, through its strategy of unifying the market and financial systems of China with those of Taiwan, Beijing is, at the same time, stepping up its own reunification agenda with its neighbor.
Yuan says it appears that the Chinese Nationalist (KMT) dominated government on Taiwan has not only failed to sense the danger, it is using propaganda and its still dominate control of Taiwan media to convince Taiwanese that as long as Taiwan works in concert with the CCP, it will grow its economy at high rates again. Yuan has serious concerns that the KMT dominated government is rolling over previously hard fought democratic advances.
Yuan’s main source for the CCP’s political agenda came from a highly classified document—Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s June 2008 speech given during the expanded meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CCP. This meeting focused on the strategy behind the Taiwan annexation plan. The meeting was so confidential that it was held deep in a cavern in Beijing’s West Mountain—the Central Military Commission’s First Strategic Command Center.
In that classified meeting, Wen Jiabao stated that an agreement must be signed to ensure that the rules of economic integration are followed. “Economic integration is by nature, economic unification. Taiwan benefits from it economically, and we [the CCP] fulfill our political goal by doing it.” It was also revealed that in order to break through the investment barrier erected by the government of Taiwan, a number of Taiwan’s merchants will have to be used as agents. They would be relatively well paid and would manage the CCP’s investments in Taiwan’s banks, insurance companies, and other strategic economic entities. In addition, “To manipulate Taiwan’s stock market so it rises or falls according to our will—that will take a lot of capital investment, but the expenditure is worthwhile, considering what we will gain politically.”
The CCP also plans to erode Taiwan’s politico-economic factions from within Taiwan by corrupting the Kuomintang (KMT) leaders and marginalizing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The economic strategy specifically targets the upper-classes of the Kuomintang (KMT), the sponsors of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and several million Taiwanese merchants.
According to Yuan, the regime has been betting on the KMT leaders for a long time. During the years from 2000-2008 when the KMT was not in control, the Chinese regime methodically began binding the economic dependency of the KMT leaders tightly to the communist regime by inviting them to open businesses in China.
In addition, Yuan explained that the regime has been trying to deepen the rift within the DPP by manipulating the money laundering case of its former leader, President Chen Shui-bian. The suppressing, weakening, and corrupting of the DPP is another integral part of the regime’s strategy to erode the country’s political framework. The book maintains the regime is fomenting social conflict and inspiring hatred toward the DPP. Yuan explains how economic means are to be used to control the sponsors of the DPP and disintegrate its standing in society.
Yuan reported that Jia Qinglin, the Chairman of the People’s Political Consultative Conference, said in the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau, “For those Taiwanese merchants who support our policies with Taiwan, we must meet their reasonable financial requirements, making them feel that the mainland is a haven for investments. For those merchants who clandestinely go against our policies, we must strengthen our monitoring and control mechanisms, and pursue financial retribution. When necessary, we can ruin them financially and make them lose everything they own.”
Yuan attributes China’s desperate and urgent annexation plan to the CCP’s fear of Taiwan’s democratic system and the influence it has had on mainland China’s population.
