Cone, Sydney M., III.

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A Democratic Taiwan in the World Community (Plenary Session II)

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DigitalCommons@NYLS Other Publications Faculty Scholarship 2007 A Democratic Taiwan in the World Community (Plenary Session II) Sydney M. Cone III. Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/fac_other_pubs Plenary Session II: A Democratic Taiwan in the World Community Moderator: Sydney M. Cone Thank you. Good afternoon. I am quite pleased to be here. My esteemed and distinguished colleague, Professor Lung-chu Chen, has honored me by including me in this program. He has been in the academic community for quite awhile. I am a new- comer. He was actually on the committee that looked me over before I was offered the Chair that I now occupy at the Law School. I assume, from the fact that I am here this afternoon, that he doesn't have too many regrets in that respect. At any rate, I am honored to be here. You will see in the program the biographies of the four speakers on the subject of "A Democratic Taiwan in the World Community." They are, and I will mention them in the order in which they are scheduled to speak. Professor John Rucker is English by origin. He is Canadian by adoption. He is, in part, American by education. He has a distinguished career in the area of human rights; it will be very informative and compelling for us to hear him on that subject about which he knows a great deal. Following Professor Rucker is Steve Charnovitz. He is ex- tremely knowledgeable concerning the World Trade Organiza- tion. It has been my pleasure and honor to be on programs with him in the past on subjects relating to world trade. He's a prolific author in that area and is quite qualified to talk to us about the World Trade Organization, and we look forward to hearing him on that subject. The next speaker will be Richard C. Bush, who very kindly explained to me ( or at least outlined me), to the extent that I was capable of grasping it, the complicated nature of diplomatic relationships between the United States government and the government of Taiwan. He was responsible on the U.S. side for 165 166 CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT furthering those relationships. He was based in Washington at that point. He was there on what I will call a mission and be was, of course, a de facto ambassador in Taiwan. He was quite important in maintaining and dealing with that relationship. Our fourth speaker, Dr. Tim Eing-Ming Wu, has a number of positions. He is Director General of the Bureau of Human Re- source Development in Taiwan. He is also Executive Director of the Asian-Pacific Public Affairs Forum. In addition, he knows a great deal about non-governmental organizations, and he will talk to us on that topic. My role is to be brief, and to that end, I will sit down and let Professor Rucker, our first speaker, talk to you. Speakers: Democracy and Human Rights with Reference to Taiwan By John Hucker Thank you very much for the introduction and for the invita- tion to be here. I have been asked to speak on the subject of "Democracy and Human Rights in Taiwan." Given that I have a short time available to me, my initial challenge will be to re- duce my somewhat discursive paper to a much more compact presentation. A second challenge is that I am not an expert on Taiwan, and I would not want participants to labor under that misapprehension. I have certainly followed developments in Taiwan with great interest, have visited the country and partici- pated in dialogue on human rights with those inside and outside of government there. But that is as far as it goes. As a threshold observation, I take it as given that there is an interplay between human rights and democracy. There are re- gimes which can lay claim to possessing the basic democratic attributes without necessarily guaranteeing a full panoply of human rights to their citizens. But clearly, human rights cannot be ignored in today's debates over democracy and its meaning. In this context, post-Second World War initiatives in the human rights field can be seen as encouraging and reinforcing notions of democracy. For example, Article 21 of the Universal Decla- 

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A Democratic Taiwan in the World Community (Plenary Session II)

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