Master Hsing Yun passed away peacefully on the afternoon of February 5th.

(file photo)

[Instant News/Comprehensive Report] Master Hsing Yun, the founding patriarch of Fo Guang Shan and the founder of the International Buddha Light Association, passed away peacefully on the afternoon of February 5 at the age of 97.

In this regard, senior media person Akio Yata said that he was a little emotional when he heard the news, and the era when cross-strait people-to-people exchanges influenced politics seemed to be gone.

Yaba Akio said in a Facebook post that when he was studying at the Matsushita Political Science and Economics School in Japan about 25 years ago, he was very interested in the role of Master Xingyun in cross-strait political exchanges for a while, and spent a lot of time studying it. "Although Venerable Hsing Yun is in Buddhism, he does not shy away from actively participating in politics, and has even been elected as a member of the Central Standing Committee of the Kuomintang. He is also a guest of honor for successive leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. If historians study the history of Sino-Taiwan relations in the last century , Master Xingyun is definitely a figure that cannot be ignored."

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Yaba Akio pointed out that Venerable Xingyun was not afraid of the CCP’s pressure after the June 4th Tiananmen Square Incident. He helped and took in many exiles who were persecuted by the CCP. Among them were famous journalists Liu Binyan and Ge Yang, political scholars Yan Jiaqi, Ruan Ming, and Su Shaozhi. There is also Xu Jiatun, a former senior official of the Communist Party of China and former director of Hong Kong's Xinhua News Agency.

Xu Jiatun lived in Fo Guang Shan Xilai Temple in California for a long time. In his later years, he wrote and published "Memoirs of Hong Kong", which introduced many unknown inside stories of the CCP's power operation, and became a classic for future generations to study Chinese politics.

Akio Yabata said that Venerable Hsing Yun has repeatedly made remarks advocating unification, which made many Taiwanese natives not understand, but he believes that Master Hsing Yun’s generation has a special historical background. The idea of ​​grand unification is actually understandable.”

Yaba Akio believes that with the decline of Master Xingyun's generation, those who pursue cross-strait reunification out of "love for their hometown" have basically withdrawn from the stage of history. The conversion of love and family love, which is thicker than water, into more specific coercion and temptation, is something Taiwan should be careful about.