Cross-strait negotiations have entered a more difficult period for Taiwan because China could not continue to provide this country with “goodwill” and “benefits” forever, the nation’s top security official said yesterday.
Cross-strait negotiations have entered a “deep water” period and from now on Beijing will likely change its policy from allowing Taiwan to “reap the benefits” of engagement to “exchanging interests,” National Security Bureau (NSB) Director Tsai Der-sheng (蔡得勝) said.
Addressing legislators at a Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee meeting on cross-strait relations, Tsai said relations had been relatively stable in recent years, but that the risk of conflict remained high.
That risk stems from variables such as January’s presidential election and the change in leadership in Beijing next year, he said.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), who will step down next year, is considered a moderate with regard to Taiwan, but if his moderate policies were reviewed, criticized and then lost influence after a new leadership established itself in Beijing, and if hardliners increased their influence, cross-strait relations could become very unstable, Tsai said.
Officials in Beijing who handle Taiwan-related affairs could be replaced once Hu goes and it would take a long time before China’s new players and their intentions were known, Tsai said.
The easier aspects of cross-strait negotiations have mostly been completed and the negotiations have now entered “deeper waters,” which means China will pay more attention to meeting its own interests and those of Chinese firms, he said.
If Beijing concludes that its “goodwill” strategy is not achieving its aims toward the unification issue, then it could change course and adopt more drastic measures, Tsai said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS