Birds not missiles should fly in the skies, Taiwan opposition leader Cheng Li-wun said yesterday in Shanghai in a plea for peace, as government legislators in Taipei expressed anger at her party for skipping crucial defence budget talks.
Cheng, chairwoman of Taiwan’s largest opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT), is in China on what she has called a “peace” mission to lessen tensions at a time when Beijing has stepped up military pressure against the island it calls its own.
China refuses to talk to Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, saying he is a “separatist”. Lai’s administration has called on Cheng to tell China to stop its threats, and says Beijing should engage with the democratically elected government in Taipei.
Speaking to reporters at Shanghai’s Yangshan Port, Cheng said she was fond of how ancient Norse sailors described the sea as the “road of the whale”.
“These words are spoken with such humility, and they are entirely right. What should fly in the sky are birds, not missiles. What should swim in the water are fish, not warships,” she said, in comments carried live on Taiwanese television stations.
Cheng, who flew to Beijing yesterday for a possible meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, also quoted, in English, part of John McCrae’s First World War poem In Flanders Fields – “If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep”.
“We may not have been able to give our ancestors peace, but we can certainly still give peace to the people of today and the people of the future,” she said.
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