Taiwan Opens Family Visits to Mainland China
台灣開放中國大陸探親
Source: 1987: Opening Mainland China Family Visits
From: PTS News Issues Centre
Date: November 2, 2011. Authors: Tsai Han-hsün, Huang Neng-yang
In 1986, the announcement of the DPP’s founding directly challenged the martial-law ban on forming political parties, bringing conflict to the brink. President Chiang Ching-kuo, wielding near-absolute power at the time, almost single-handedly absorbed the pressure from all sides and announced his resolve to lift martial law — yet in the social divisions of that era, “returning home” was regarded as the demand of the weak, of communist sympathisers, of Taiwan independence troublemakers. Against this backdrop, some mainland-born veterans, resisting the political system that forbade contact with family in “enemy territory,” formed the “Mainlanders’ Association for Promoting Family Visits to the Mainland” — with the support of tangwai figures and humanist intellectuals — and launched a nearly year-long movement for veterans’ right to return home, ultimately bringing about the policy of opening cross-strait family visits.
Tags
External Links
- Longing for Home (The Return Movement) (Life Memory Narratives)
- [Time Corridor] Seventy Years of Taiwan’s Retrocession Annals (27): Opening Cross-Strait Family Visits (Merit Times)
- Inside Story: In 1987 Chiang Ching-kuo Announced the Opening of Family Visits for a Million Taiwan Veterans (Huaxia Net)