Statement No: FCM-ST-2026-10-10-01
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 10, 2026
WASHINGTON / TAIPEI — On the morning of October 10, 2026, President Lai Ching-te stood in the plaza before the Presidential Office in Taipei and delivered the Republic of China’s 115th National Day address: “Taiwan’s Future: A City upon a Hill, the Salt and Light of the World.”
“We must become a ‘city upon a hill,’ built with courage and confidence,” the president said. “This is not to sing our own praises, but rather to declare our aspirations for the nation’s future. It is also a responsibility Taiwan stands ready to shoulder.”
The Free China Movement welcomes the image — and asks that it be taken all the way seriously. A city upon a hill is visible from far away. It cannot pretend not to see. And it must not turn away from those who remain in darkness.
The address drew on the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:13–14. Presidential officials explained the three metaphors afterward: the city stands for democratic governance; salt stands for resistance to authoritarian erosion; light stands for Taiwan’s technological and humanitarian contributions to the world. “Taiwan’s light,” the president said, “comes from the wisdom and diligence of our people, from the innovations of our industries, from our choice to share our successes with the world.” And: “Taiwan cherishes peace, but we will not give up our freedom.” “Taiwan is open to exchanges, but will not accept subordination.” A full translation of the address is available from the Presidential Office.
President Lai also recalled that this year marks thirty years since Taiwan’s first direct presidential election — when citizens went to the polls, as he put it, showing their courage in the face of missile threats, and told the world that the future of Taiwan would be decided by the people of Taiwan.
That memory is the right place to start, because it settles a question the speech’s title leaves open. The day being celebrated is the National Day of the Republic of China. The Republic of China is not the island of Taiwan. Taiwan is where the overwhelming majority of its citizens live and where its government sits; the Republic of China is the constitutional order they live under — proclaimed on January 1, 1912, after the Wuchang Uprising of October 10, 1911; founded on Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People (三民主義); and given its permanent constitutional form in 1947. Article 1: “The Republic of China, founded on the Three Principles of the People, shall be a democratic republic of the people, to be governed by the people and for the people.” Article 2: sovereignty resides in the whole body of citizens. Our companion paper traces the republic’s constitutional history from 1911 through democratization.
That history is not a fairy tale, and the Free China Movement does not tell it as one. The Republic of China’s first four decades on Taiwan were authoritarian: martial law from 1949 to 1987, critics jailed, a one-party state. What matters is what happened next. The promise written in 1947 was finally kept — on Taiwan. Competing parties, a free press, an independent judiciary, peaceful transfers of power in 2000, 2008, and 2016, and a presidential election held under missile threat in 1996. Freedom on Taiwan was not inherited. It was paid for. As we noted in our October 2 National Day campaign statement, October 10 is the birthday of a republic founded for the people.
And that is exactly why the president’s image carries an obligation he did not spell out. The promise of 1947 was not made to one island. “The whole body of citizens” meant the Chinese people as such — including the hundreds of millions who live today under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. The people of Taiwan paid for their freedom; peoples who have paid for freedom owe a debt of memory to those who are still paying.
Across the Strait, mainland Chinese people live under a party-state that imprisons lawyers for defending their clients, punishes believers for their faith, and treats public remembrance as subversion. The distinction matters and must be kept sharp: the Chinese Communist Party is not the Chinese people. The regime is their jailer, not their voice.
Name them, because a city upon a hill does not deal in abstractions. Xie Yang (谢阳), the human-rights lawyer seized in the 2015 “709” crackdown, detained again in 2022, and sentenced on March 23, 2026 to five years’ imprisonment for “inciting subversion of state power.” The rights-defense lawyers as a community — detained, disbarred, disappeared, and still defending. In Hong Kong: Chow Hang-tung, Lee Cheuk-yan, and Albert Ho, sentenced on September 11, 2026 to seven years and three months, seven years, and five years and two months in the Hong Kong Alliance case; Jimmy Lai, serving a twenty-year sentence. The Free China Movement’s political-prisoner directory documents these cases and others, with statuses updated as they are verified.
To say the Republic of China bears a moral and historical responsibility toward these people is not to assert jurisdiction over territory it does not govern. The Free China Movement draws that line plainly: moral responsibility does not create legal authority, and we claim none. What it creates is an obligation of solidarity — to speak for the imprisoned by name, to document what is done to them, to refuse to trade their freedom away in any bargain, and to keep the constitutional door open. Our position has not changed: peaceful constitutional development, the protection of human rights, and democratic self-determination — for the people of Taiwan, and one day for the people of the mainland as well.
This is what the president’s metaphors require, if they are to mean anything. Salt resists erosion — including the erosion of memory about who is still unfree. Light illuminates — including corners the comfortable prefer not to see. A lamp that shines only for itself is a lamp under a basket.
The Free China Movement therefore calls on the government of the Republic of China to give mainland China’s political prisoners and persecuted rights defenders a permanent place in its human-rights policy — by name, not by euphemism. We call on democratic governments everywhere to press for their release and to stop treating the Communist Party as the voice of the Chinese people. And to the people of the mainland who may read this at risk: the lamp is lit. Hold on.
One hundred and fifteen years after Wuchang, the republic founded for the people endures — on Taiwan, in freedom. Its birthday is the right day to remember the rest of the promise. A city upon a hill must not turn away from those who remain in darkness.
Media contact: press@freechina.live