Quotes & Sayings About Taiwan

Our policy for the last many years has been to deter the Chinese government in Beijing from ever coming into the position where they thought they had enough leverage over the U.S. to cross the Straits of Taiwan. — Bob Filner

I am an Asian designer. I was born in Taiwan. That is who I am. But I am a designer, like any designer of any race. Growing up in the '80s in Taiwan, the arts were not considered a career. — Jason Wu

I think that there is a relatively small number of people who are pushing for independence in Taiwan. — Fred Thompson

We stand with the people of Taiwan and their democratic ways, and I am proud to be a part of reaffirming the unwavering commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act by the United States Congress. — Eliot Engel

Brenda is staring at Roamer and the rest of the crying herd, her eyes dry and angry. I know what she's feeling. Here are these people who called him 'freak' and never paid attention to him, except to make fun of him or spread rumors about him, and now they are carrying on like professional mourners, the ones you can hire in Taiwan or the Middle East to sing, cry, and crawl on the ground. His family is just as bad. — Jennifer Niven

I have great confidence in Taiwan's democracy. I have great confidence in the universal value and in basic human rights, and I have great confidence that referenda will eventually take root and become part of our daily lives in Taiwan. — Chen Shui-bian

I expect the ruling and opposition parties to work together for the future of Taiwan. — Chen Shui-bian

But now all of a sudden some idiots in Taiwan start to say that they are not Chinese. Their grand parents were Chinese. But for some reason, they feel they are not Chinese. — Alex Chiu

I just want people to respect the privacy of my relatives in Taiwan ... They need to live their lives as well. — Jeremy Lin

My wife is really sentimental. One Valentine's Day I gave her a ring and to this day she has never forgotten those three little words that were engraved inside Made in Taiwan! — Leopold Fechtner

Ultimately, China may use force to push for unification with Taiwan, a scenario we all must work to prevent. — Michael K. Simpson

I'd learned so much from traveling to familiar places that I figured I'd learn twice as much by going to a place I knew nothing about. — Gerry Abbey

I looked out again at the rising moon and I let the weight of my day, my week, lift away with the rushing wind as I was blown into the depths of myself. — Gerry Abbey

America has made it very clear in several administrations that if there is an attack by China on Taiwan, the United States is very likely to resist. — Henry A. Kissinger

[We should] set our eyes on the future. The political differences between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan should eventually be solved step by step, and [we] can not let these problems hand on from generation to generation. — Xi Jinping

On the one hand, these filmmakers are the descendants of the May Fourth movement at the beginning of the century. One of the important ideological components of the May Fourth movement was its radical antitraditional stance, exemplified by its famous slogan: "Smash the Confucian Temple" (zalan kongjiadian). — Tonglin Lu

Taiwan is a major economy. — William Kirby

As the silence returned, I sat back and felt the tension ease away; I hadn't even known I was tense. A few moments passed and once again the cycling fan laced in with the clanging chains and mixed with the rumbling mower and the buzzing insects. — Gerry Abbey

The youth of Taiwan not only have to face the harsh reality of low wages and high commodity and housing prices, but due to the lack of employment opportunities, many young people are forced to leave their home towns to search for jobs in the cities. — Tsai Ing-wen

Certainly nothing is easier than to rewrite history. If we had made Taiwan a separate state, it would have led to a fundamental conflict with China, and probably to war. Certainly in the long term, it would have led to war. — Henry A. Kissinger

Taiwan and China are related ethnically and close neighbors geographically. There's no reason to resent or to fight against each other. — Annette Lu

The eventual aim was to build a 4,000-acre high-tech park, called Alpha Technopolis, to rival Taiwan's famous Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park. The vision was grand, perhaps overly so. — Raghuram G. Rajan

Downslopes in the curve show that at various times Algeria, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Romania, South Korea, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, and Yugoslavia have pursued nuclear weapons but then thought the better of it - occasionally through the persuasion of an Israeli air strike, but more often by choice. — Steven Pinker

The first time I went to Taiwan, there were cameras, paparazzi, TV stations outside my hotel twenty-four hours a day nonstop. — Jeremy Lin

Regardless of how successful the Fifth Generation and New Taiwan cinemas have been in the international film milieu, this (limited) recognition usually is based on two aspects: the formal or the exotic. Their works are praised as highly formally innovative (in other words, how well the have mastered the new-wave visual language of the West -- thus, our modernist language) or exotic (as revealing the mystery of an inscrutable Other). This may explain why in the United States, mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan cinemas are still perceived as a homogeneous entity called Chinese cinema, though they are products of the vastly different cultures of three geopolitically segregated regions. — Tonglin Lu

The majority of Taiwan people cannot accept Taiwan becoming a second Hong Kong, nor can we accept Taiwan becoming a local government of the People's Republic of China or a Special Administrative Region of China. — Chen Shui-bian

Free nations of the world cannot allow Taiwan, a beacon of democracy, to be subdued by an authoritarian China. — Nick Lampson

A war in the Taiwan Strait would destroy China's international relations overnight. It would destroy Chinese - Japanese relations, not to mention Chinese - American relations. — William Kirby

I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned. — Jung Chang

My favorite thing about Taiwan is the food. — Jason Wu

I have spent time discussing the American political system and current events in Taiwan with the junior diplomats, and they have repeatedly expressed their country's desire to avoid confrontation with China. — Michael K. Simpson

Taiwan will probably not declare independence. The question isn't independence. The issue is whether Taiwan will declare itself as a sovereign separate state. That will start a huge crisis if that happens. — Henry A. Kissinger

Buddhists and Taoists of the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan share the same roots and instructions and have always maintained sound exchanges. — Jia Qinglin

Taiwan matters because of its vital role in spreading democracy in East Asia. Taiwan matters because of its strategic importance to promote peace in the Pacific region. — Annette Lu

So, anything that avoids a conflict that could draw in, unhappily again, outside powers such as the United States or revisit, for example, Japan's interests in the Taiwan area would be the last thing that anyone would want. — William Kirby

Taiwan is a budding democracy, and the people have participated in multi-party democratic elections since 1996. — Todd Akin

Facebook is blocked in mainland China, but is used heavily by the rest of the Chinese-speaking world, including Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. — Rebecca MacKinnon

I have this idea of a Taiwan Consensus, which means people in Taiwan have to get together and form a consensus of their own and that they turn around to talk to the Chinese to form a cross-strait consensus so we can build a relationship on that consensus. And in my view, that is the right order to do things. — Tsai Ing-wen

Even if I were knocked down by one gunshot it wouldn't affect our democracy and I wasn't knocked down and I have great confidence in our democracy and in Taiwan and in the people of Taiwan. — Chen Shui-bian

The greater concerns in China and Taiwan are on the political side, not on the economic side. — William Kirby

Take the following potent and less-is-more-style argument by the rogue economist Ha-Joon Chang. In 1960 Taiwan had a much lower literacy rate than the Philippines and half the income per person; today Taiwan has ten times the income. At the same time, Korea had a much lower literacy rate than Argentina (which had one of the highest in the world) and about one-fifth the income per person; today it has three times as much. Further, over the same period, sub-Saharan Africa saw markedly increasing literacy rates, accompanied with a decrease in their standard of living. We can multiply the examples (Pritchet's study is quite thorough), but I wonder why people don't realize the simple truism, that is, the fooled by randomness effect: mistaking the merely associative for the causal, that is, if rich countries are educated, immediately inferring that education makes a country rich, without even checking. Epiphenomenon here again. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We have global interests, potential threats from elsewhere, North Korea, Iran, Taiwan Straits and the like. We must be prepared for any future threat. That is why it is important that this be a transition year, 2006. — Ike Skelton

Whatever it took to help Taiwan defend theirself. — George W. Bush

Taiwan politics certainly is colorful. — Rebecca MacKinnon

We expect the Taiwan authorities publicly to correct the record and unambiguously affirm that the February 27 announcement did not abolish the National Unification Council, did not change the status quo, and that the assurances remain in effect. — Joseph Adam Ereli

My professional life had started and here I was at a professional dinner full of uninhibited drinking. — Gerry Abbey

For Singapore, its test for its own democracy must be whether it fit and serve the interests of its people and conditions, and not serve some abstract ideal that the Western media thought it ought to conform to. If in 10 years, Philippines, Taiwan and Korea were better societies because they adopted the US model, Singapore would hurry to catch. — Goh Chok Tong

Making this movie as a period piece about a period that was very recent in people's minds. I was in Taiwan [during the 1970s], so I hope I did all right. Otherwise, it could be the biggest embarrassment of my life. Also, the story is not linear, it's patchy, like a cubist painting, and there is always the possibility it will not hold together, it will fall apart. The tone is part satire, part serious drama, part tragedy, all mixed together, and it has to hit an emotional core. That's also very scary. — Ang Lee

It was one of those striking moments in life where you find familiarity in the inexplicable. — Gerry Abbey

The PRC is the big brother in this relationship, and it has the capacity to be generous to Taiwan on this issue in a manner that might do much to defuse that issue internally in Taiwan. — William Kirby

China is a great manufacturing center, but it's actually mostly an assembly plant. So it assembles parts and components, high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial - more advanced industrial centers - Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Europe - and it basically assembles them. — Noam Chomsky

You know golf is very lonely. When I'm in the States, I feel like if I just think about Taiwan, my friends, my fans, I won't feel like I'm alone. — Yani Tseng

Back in eighth grade, I'd seen nothing but small-town Georgia when I left the U.S. for the first time and went to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. — Chandler Massey

More and more of the Taiwanese economy is connected with the mainland. There are more and more exchanges taking place. There's no reason to doubt that over a period of ten years or so, or maybe more, the conditions of life on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will become more comparable, and the dialogue on the political level therefore easier. — Henry A. Kissinger

Taiwan is democratic. — Annette Lu

People don't think that bread is part of Asian culture or Asian food culture, but it's quite prevalent in Northern China, and you see it throughout Japan and as you go to Taiwan. — David Chang

These two points are lies. UN Resolution 2758 does not say a word about the relationship between Taiwan and China, let alone say that the PRC represents Taiwan — Annette Lu

Did it really matter how many copies of Windows we sold in Taiwan this month when millions of children were without access to books? — John Wood

If we really love and cherish Taiwan, we should hold our hands in unity to protect our country and our democratic values with the most humble and tolerant hearts. — Chen Shui-bian

Well it did not make excessive sense to say that 20 million people are the recognized government of a billion people that have their own institutions. We did not change it in the sense that we said this has to end, but there was a U.N. vote that transferred the legitimacy of China from Taiwan to Beijing. Beijing was recognized as the government of all of China. Then, under President Carter, we followed what the U.N. had already done eight years earlier. — Henry A. Kissinger

Many of the Kuomintang elite in Taiwan have relatives among the ruling elite here on mainland China. — Rebecca MacKinnon

When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that. — Ang Lee

When I was in Taiwan, we were there for about 8 months, and I was 11 at the time, so it was definitely a culture shock. But it was a really interesting time to be there. I didn't entirely realize how different it is from the States. I just accepted it because I was there and my parents needed to be there. — David Lambert

Somehow, we were passing the boundaries of language and finding clarity in shared thought, even if we were just talking about beer! — Gerry Abbey

We ask them to remove the missiles deployed against Taiwan, give up their military threat, and instead let us together open the door to cross-Strait peaceful and stable dialogue and negotiations. — Chen Shui-bian

We will never allow anybody to separate Taiwan from China. — Hu Jintao

We had Taiwan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Oman open their markets to our beef, and we're excited about that. — Mike Johanns

Belize pledges it continued support to the aspirations of the 23 million people of Taiwan to be full participants in all organs and agencies of the international community. — Said Musa

With Taiwan, it took about 40 years to go from an authoritarian to a democratic society. — Ma Ying-jeou

Taiwan is an independent sovereign country. — Chen Shui-bian

Political activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan use Facebook as their primary tool to mobilize support for their causes and activities. — Rebecca MacKinnon

It can be argued - and rightly - that Taiwan is not just another regional issue: after all, the Chinese regard it as part of China. But Taiwan is also a regional issue for three reasons. First, the overthrow or even the neutering of democracy in Taiwan, which is what Beijing effectively demands, would be a major setback for democracy in the region as a whole. Second, if the Chinese were able to get their way by force in Taiwan, they would undoubtedly be tempted to do the same in other disputes. And third, there is no lack of such disputes to provoke a quarrel. — Margaret Thatcher

Of course, in principle, they're against it. We are the ones that keep asking them what they think about it. I think their basic concern is a land-based missile defense of Taiwan hooked into the American communications and other systems, which in effect would make Taiwan then an outpost of the United States. That is a concern they frequently express. A missile defense shield of the United States, while they may not like it, it is not a big obstacle to our relationship. — Henry A. Kissinger

Gender used to be a barrier for women to overcome if they wanted to be in politics, but today in Taiwan the situation is somewhat different. I think there is even a preference for a woman candidate, and in local elections, we have seen that younger, better-educated female candidates are overwhelmingly preferred by the voters. — Tsai Ing-wen

I was born in Yangzhou, China, two years after World War II ended. I was 5 when my family escaped to Taiwan. Eight years later, we moved to Japan. — Andrew Cherng

In Taiwan there's a saying: Raising a child is more important than giving birth. Raising a child is greater. — Chien-Ming Wang

We will make every effort to unify all ethnic groups, to strengthen belief in Taiwan and to persist in reform. — Chen Shui-bian

There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy. — Colin Powell

There is a great deal of concern in the Chinese military that Taiwan's reunification with China is drifting further and further away. — Rebecca MacKinnon

The election of the nationalist Chen Shui-bian as president in 2000 and his re-election in 2004 was a nadir in the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland. — Martin Jacques

Taiwan's democracy has grown very fast and we enjoy a certain degree of freedom, as other developed democracies like the United States. — Annette Lu

The problem with representation in the media has very much to do with the conflicts between groups in the world. If you talk about Iraq, al Qaeda, Darfur, even Taiwan, representation is a part of that problem. — Arthur Dong

In Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the government in a matter of years has put a lot of energy behind recycling food waste as livestock feed. It's environmentally friendly, it provides cheap livestock feed for the farmers in those parts of the world, and it avoids sending the food waste to landfill. — Tristram Stuart

Many in Taiwan believe that Hu Jintao is much more sophisticated than his predecessors in understanding Taiwan. He represents a different generation of leaders, more pragmatic, less ideological. — Ma Ying-jeou

Safeguarding the interests of our Taiwan compatriots and expanding their well-being is the mainland's oft-repeated pledge and solemn promise of the new leaders of China's Communist Party central committee. — Xi Jinping

Every time there has been an attempt to disturb it, it led to two things. It led to immediate intense conflict with China, and it led to a reaffirmation in the end, because nobody wanted a major confrontation with China to this principle of a "one China" policy within which Taiwan is finding a place now. Its own position has greatly improved since the Nixon policy. It is richer, it is stronger and it is participating in many international organizations. — Henry A. Kissinger

Mr. Speaker, in seeking to return to the United Nations, the Republic of China on Taiwan will once again ask diplomatic allies to present its case before the United Nations this fall. — Nick Lampson

I will rebuild the people's trust in government and create a stable foundation for Taiwan's future development. — Tsai Ing-wen

We will strive to make Taiwan a better place and enable our people to live better lives. — Chen Shui-bian

I am a native of Taiwan, and I earned my bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University. I received my master's and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. — Min Kao

I have said there are three principles that should be followed. One, we should maintain the "one China" policy that every American president has articulated, including President Reagan. Secondly, we should make clear that we want a peaceful resolution. And three, Taiwan should not challenge that arrangement in a way that will provoke a conflict. Those are three perfectly clear principles. I haven't used any of the other slogans. — Henry A. Kissinger

There are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United States, no Soviet Union, no China, no Taiwan ... Rivers flow unimpeded across the swaths of continents. The persistent tides - the pulse of the sea - do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on Earth. — Jacques-Yves Cousteau

None of the Asian countries that have moved closer to the developed countries of the West in recent years has benefited from large foreign investments, whether it be Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan and more recently China. In essence, all of these countries themselves financed the necessary investments in physical capital and, even more, in human capital, which the latest research holds to be the key to long-term growth.35 Conversely, countries owned by other countries, whether in the colonial period or in Africa today, have been less successful, most notably because they have tended to specialize in areas without much prospect of future development and because they have been subject to chronic political instability. — Thomas Piketty

But if the Chinese mainland, the PRC, attacked Taiwan, we'd be obligated to come to their aid. — Fred Thompson

However, I must say that I am very happy to see that we have such a positive result for our first referendum in our history and that gives me more confidence in Taiwan's democracy. — Chen Shui-bian

I'm just so happy to see my friends and fans in Taiwan, 'cause that's where I'm from. — Yani Tseng

We must unify Taiwan; we cannot afford to have our society being divided in half. — Chen Shui-bian

There were signs everywhere but none that I could read or even hope to decipher. These multi-lined symbols unhinged my familiar world. — Gerry Abbey

We are curious creatures, we Taiwanese. Orphans. Eventually, orphans must choose their own names and write their own stories. The beauty of orphanhood is the blank slate. — Shawna Yang Ryan

The L.A. weather is a lot like Taiwan's, where you don't observe four seasons, so the years can pass and you don't feel a thing. — Ang Lee