President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday urged China to scrap the growing number of missiles aimed at Taiwan, adding that he would not exclude the possibility of meeting Chinese leaders one day.
Taiwan planned to buy more weapons from the US to protect itself, although it did not want an arms race with China as trade ties expand and with more deals expected to be signed in the coming year or so, Ma said.
“[There are] more than 1,000 [missiles] and they haven’t changed that. The number continues to go up. That is certainly a great concern for the people here,” Ma said during an interview at the Presidential Office.
“If we are to negotiate a peace agreement with the mainland, certainly we expect them to do something about those missiles, either to remove them or dismantle them,” said Ma, who has attempted to ease tensions with China since taking office in May last year.
The 59-year-old Ma, who became chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the weekend, said he would not rule out meeting Chinese leaders, such as his counterpart Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
“I won’t exclude that possibility, but there’s no timetable for that yet,” Ma said, when asked if he would meet Hu. “At the moment, we have our hands full with economic issues.”
Despite political differences, commercial ties have flourished. China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner with two-way trade of more than US$130 billion, while Taiwanese businesses have poured more than US$100 billion into China.
Ma said the nation needed to diversify its exports to stay competitive and forecast 4 percent economic growth next year. He also said Taiwan expected to sign a deal similar to a free-trade agreement with China next year that would cut tariffs.
The president hopes more of the exports that go to China would be sold to the Chinese domestic market, instead of being re-exported to advanced economies, such as the US and Europe, that have been harder hit by the steep global downturn.
“It’s not possible for us to change the economy, [which is] based on exports, but we could diversify the export market, not focusing entirely on the United States or Europe,” Ma said. “Actually, the largest export destination is mainland China, but many of the goods with mainland China are reprocessed to be re-exported to the US and Europe, so we will modify that policy so that mainland China is no longer treated only as a factory, but rather as a market.”
Intelligence agents have recorded 510,000 instances of “controversial information” being spread online by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) so far this year, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said in a report yesterday, as it warned of artificial intelligence (AI) being employed to generate destabilizing misinformation. The bureau submitted a written report to the Legislative Yuan in preparation for National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen’s (蔡明彥) appearance before the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee today. The CCP has been using cognitive warfare to divide Taiwanese society by commenting on controversial issues such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) investments in the
INVESTIGATION: The case is the latest instance of a DPP figure being implicated in an espionage network accused of allegedly leaking information to Chinese intelligence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member Ho Jen-chieh (何仁傑) was detained and held incommunicado yesterday on suspicion of spying for China during his tenure as assistant to then-minister of foreign affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮). The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said Ho was implicated during its investigation into alleged spying activities by former Presidential Office consultant Wu Shang-yu (吳尚雨). Prosecutors said there is reason to believe Ho breached the National Security Act (國家安全法) by leaking classified Ministry of Foreign Affairs information to Chinese intelligence. Following interrogation, prosecutors petitioned the Taipei District Court to detain Ho, citing concerns over potential collusion or tampering of evidence. The
‘COMPREHENSIVE PLAN’: Lin Chia-lung said that the government was ready to talk about a variety of issues, including investment in and purchases from the US The National Stabilization Fund (NSF) yesterday announced that it would step in to staunch stock market losses for the ninth time in the nation’s history. An NSF board meeting, originally scheduled for Monday next week, was moved to yesterday after stocks plummeted in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 32 percent tariffs on Taiwan on Wednesday last week. Board members voted to support the stock market with the NT$500 billion (US$15.15 billion) fund, with injections of funds to begin as soon as today. The NSF in 2000 injected NT$120 billion to stabilize stocks, the most ever. The lowest amount it
NEGOTIATIONS: Taiwan has good relations with Washington and the outlook for the negotiations looks promising, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo said Taiwan’s GDP growth this year is expected to decrease by 0.43 to 1.61 percentage points due to the effects of US tariffs, National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei yesterday, citing a preliminary estimate by a private research institution. Taiwan’s economy would be significantly affected by the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs slapped by the US, which took effect yesterday, Liu said, adding that GDP growth could fall below 3 percent and potentially even dip below 2 percent to 1.53 percent this year. The council has commissioned another institution
RSS