Today is the 75th Independence Day of the Republic of India and its 71st year as a state. Our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Wu, specifically went on Twitter to state: “India is the world’s largest and Asia’s oldest democracy, holding a place in his heart.”
Hmm?!
Joseph Wu, the Minister of Foreign Affairs appointed by Tsai Ing-wen, is once again smuggling his own political ideas. However, his official title overhead, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China, makes his internet speech, which sounds like that of a naive politician, once again fall into an absurd joke of ignorance…
This kind of ridiculous absurdity is not the first time appearing in him. When he addressed Japanese people as “elder brothers” in his capacity as Foreign Minister, turning himself into a “little brother,” he had already lost the self-esteem and character a professional diplomat of a country should have…
It inevitably makes people question whether the DPP government no longer has more professional talents to substitute, which is why this “Little Brother Joseph Wu” has been occupying the post of Minister…
The fact is that our (including Joseph Wu’s) own country, “Republic of China (ROC) 🇹🇼”, had already overthrown the Qing Dynasty and established the first complete Asian democratic polity on January 1, 1912, which is a full 38 years earlier than the Republic of India established on January 26, 1950.
Even the former President of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek, specifically visited India to support the father of India, Mahatma Gandhi, and issued a formal statement supporting India’s political independence and national self-determination, making the Republic of China the first major country in the world to officially support Indian independence.
Let’s not even mention whether there was a mechanism for democratically electing leaders in ancient China before the era of recorded history thousands of years ago (such as the abdication system during the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors period). Let’s talk about the Lanfang Republic (Lanfang Kongsi) founded by Chinese people in Borneo in 1777, which was a country specifically established to protect Chinese people from being invaded by the Dutch.
Although the Lanfang Republic still called itself the Lanfang Company when paying tribute to the Qing Dynasty, from a broad perspective, the Lanfang Republic was the first democratic republic in modern Asia to realize democratic mechanisms in politics.
Little Brother Wu, you are really wrong. The oldest and continuously existing democratic country in Asia is not India, but your own country, the Republic of China 🇹🇼.