KMT Culture and Communications Committee
September 22, 2020
On September 15th, Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang was interviewed on a radio program. The United Daily News reported on this interview and provided a summary of its main points. The following is an English translation of that summary.
The radio show host asked if the KMT is concerned that the US would resent the party's current push for a referendum on opposing US ractopamine pork. Johnny Chiang Chi-chen (江啟臣) responded that the topic of the referendum is public: it is anti-ractopamine, not anti-US; deliberately misinterpreting it as an anti-US referendum is a malicious lie.
When asked if Chairman Chiang had already scheduled a meeting with officials from the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Johnny Chiang said that the KMT legislators on the Foreign and National Defense Committee were in the process of coordinating a time to meet with AIT officials. The KMT has always supported communication with the US and has simultaneously welcomed high-level US visits to Taiwan, urging Washington to converse not only with the ruling party, but to converse also with the opposition party; after all, the opposition party also represents a large amount of public opinion.
Johnny Chiang also stated that cross-Strait relations are absolutely not a zero-sum game, and Taiwan-US relations are even less zero-sum. If the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) insists on pushing cross-Strait relations into a zero-sum relationship, this is the DPP's problem. However, the US ractopamine pork problem is a bread and butter issue, so the KMT has decided to call for a referendum to settle the issue. This way, no one can say that the KMT is pro-US at the expense of the people's health, or that the KMT does not allow the people the right to decide; on the contrary, it is the DPP that insisted on making the decision to lift the ban on ractopamine pork and beef. We must not disregard the objections of our people, Chiang vowed.
(Chinese language reporting courtesy of the United Daily News.)
https://udn.com/news/story/9750/4862447
