Washington Post report<\/a> dated May 7, 1989, opened with Wu\u2019er being lifted on to students\u2019 shoulders as they charged a police line. \u201cThe police pulled Wuer down and ripped the school flag he was holding to the ground, but his action allowed hundreds of followers to break through,\u201d it reads.<\/p>\nLater that month, in what would become one of the movement\u2019s defining moments, a hunger-striking Wu\u2019er met with the government’s representative, Li Peng, wearing hospital pajamas and proceeded to berate the Mao-suited cadre in front of the media.<\/p>\n
Li would later back the bloody crackdown that sent Wu\u2019er and many others underground. Wu\u2019er escaped to Hong Kong as part of the smuggling effort known as Operation Yellowbird. From there, he made it to the United States, where he met his Taiwanese wife.<\/p>\n
Wu\u2019er and his family have lived in Taiwan since 1996. He\u2019s tried several times to return to China, telling reporters he is willing to turn himself in to visit his aging parents. Every time, Beijing turned him back.<\/p>\n
His foray into Taiwanese politics comes at an interesting juncture.<\/p>\n
President Ma Ying-jeou came to power in 2008, promising closer China ties. That policy culminated last year in the first meeting between China and Taiwan\u2019s top leaders since the end of the Chinese Civil War.<\/p>\n
Although Taiwan is a thriving democracy, Beijing still claims sovereignty over it. Ma\u2019s rapprochement was premised on a framework, negotiated in 1992, that allows both sides to say there is \u201cone China\u201d without specifying what that means.<\/p>\n
The woman predicted to become Taiwan\u2019s next president, Tsai Ing-wen, does not put much stock in the \u201c1992 consensus,\u201d promising instead to preserve the \u201cstatus quo\u201d across the Taiwan Strait.<\/p>\n
Wu\u2019er disagrees with both stances, seeing the 1992 agreement as a Cold War relic and embrace of the status quo as a cop-out. He wants Taiwan to formally recognize the People\u2019s Republic of China and end what he sees as the \u201cone China\u201d myth. \u201cNobody really believes there is one country anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are two countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether or not the idea proves popular with voters, who are mostly focused on domestic issues, the act of campaigning means something, said Wang Dan, a fellow Tiananmen survivor who lives in Taiwan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s important to participate in democracy, and it doesn\u2019t matter if he gets elected or not,\u201d he said of Wu\u2019er.<\/p>\n
Both men see Taiwan\u2019s democracy as an inspiration \u2014 and, they hope, a model.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople probably won\u2019t believe it if we say China will become a democracy one day, but it\u2019s not impossible. It happened here in Taiwan,\u201d Wang said.<\/p>\n
Wu\u2019er said that if he is elected as a representative of the Constitutional Reform Fraternity Coalition, he will make domestic issues a priority for the next few years.<\/p>\n
But he said he \u201cmust hope\u201d for a democratic future across the strait and knows he wants to be part of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to learn how to shape a new type of democracy,\u201d he said. \u201cOne that will work for Taiwan and hopefully, one day, for China.\u201d<\/p>\n
Xu Yangjingjing in Beijing contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most prominent and charismatic leaders of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square is running for a legislative seat in Taiwan\u2019sgeneral election Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2385"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}