Vice President Lu Attends a Prize-awarding Ceremony for the 2002 Taipei International Cartoon Contest
Taipei, Nov. 3 (CNA) Vice President Annette Lu on Sunday called on mainland Chinese authorities to cut their missile development and deployment spending for the sake of pursuing peace across the Taiwan Strait.
Lu made the appeal while speaking at a prize-awarding ceremony for the 2002 Taipei International Cartoon Contest, which opened Saturday in Taipei with world-renowned caricaturists from 50-odd countries attending. "While mainland China is conducting its annual military maneuvers in Hainan, an island off South China, Taiwan is sponsoring the international cartoon contest with 'world peace' and 'counter-terrorism' as its themes, an event showing the island country's peace-loving nature," Lu said.
Beijing has mobilized a large number of warships and fighters to conduct its ongoing 2002 joint military exercises in Hainan with Taiwan as its hypothetical enemy, Lu explained. "The people of Taiwan love peace, so it is unnecessary for mainland China to deploy missiles along the southeastern coast opposite Taiwan," she went on.
Noting that war can only lead to casualties instead of solving problems, Lu voiced the hope that all participating cartoonists will join hands to promote world peace.
She also lauded domestic cartoonists for the key role they played in the process of Taiwan's democratization, saying that many of them used their satirical cartoons to help promote the democratic movement during the martial law period.
At that time, she said, some cartoonists were sent to prison only hours after their satirical caricatures were published, Lu noted. In contrast, nowadays local cartoonists can draw what they want to as Taiwan has become a democratic country, she added.
Following her speech, Lu was presented with a cartoon drawing of herself, after which she stuck a "heart" label symbolizing peace on a big signboard of cartoon drawings of U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, in the hope that Bush will make the right decision on the Iraqi issue.
Lu also directed the Government Information Office to study the feasibility of helping local caricaturists to organize a similar cartoon exhibition every year.
The 2002 international cartoon contest has brought together 938 works from domestic and foreign artists, but only 60 works were put on display, including 20 works judged to be "excellent" and five as the "best." Cartoon drawings from mainland China, Eastern Europe and South America accounted for 60 percent of the prize winners, with only two cartoonists from Taiwan winning prizes.
The display will run through Nov. 10 at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, with renowned cartoonists giving instructions on cartoon drawing during the exhibition.