Taiwan should help on climate change: Ma

Long before Han Chinese settled in Taiwan, Austranesian peoples had resided on the island. The Han Chinese have no racial conflict with these indigenous peoples now, but are facing the challenge of communal disharmony, stirred up while President Chen Shui-bian was in office.

The feud between native-born Han Chinese islanders and Chinese emigrants to Taiwan after 1945 and their offspring born and brought up on the island had been all but disarmed by intermarriages and the removal of language barriers by the end of the last century. Chen pursued an anti-China policy, which arguably polarized the Han Chinese majority in Taiwan.

That disharmony is impeding the improvement of relations across the Strait, President Ma said. Taipei wants to promote peaceful cooperation with Beijing on the basis of the consensus of 1992, known popularly as the principle of one China with different interpretations. Under that tacit agreement, both Taipei and Beijing acknowledge there is but one China whose connotation can be individually and orally expressed.

Efforts are being redoubled to achieve consensus among the people on Taiwan on how to further enhance relations across the Strait, President Ma stressed.

Ma appreciated the pictures Damon Winter took in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election in the United States. Winter won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for covering President Barack Obama's successful campaign.

His photographs, President Ma said, have helped break the ethnic barrier in Obama's presidential drive. Winter was still another Pulitzer Prize winner the president met with in the morning.

All three prize-winning journalists took part in a two-day workshop at National Chengchi University, which closed in the afternoon. With “Rethinking the Concept of Professionalism” as its theme, the Pulitzer Prize Winners Workshop was organized jointly by the Central News Agency and Chengchi College of Mass Communications.

The forum, the second one held at Chengchi, will help improve the quality of news reporting in and about Taiwan, President Ma said. “In particular,” he stressed, “the three winners are specialized in fields where the press in Taiwan needs much more important.”

“Their participation will be of great help to our press to make the world know and understand Taiwan better,” President Ma said. Taiwan has so far failed to increase its news exposure the world over.

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