The Presidential Office confirmed yesterday that the president received a letter from former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) deputy minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) defending himself against an accusation that he had leaked national secrets, before Chang issued a statement on Sunday last week that suggested he had been forced to resign.
Presidential Office spokesperson Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國) said that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had indeed received a letter from Chang, but “as the case has now been put under judicial investigation, the office would not comment on the matter.”
The news about the letter initially came to public attention in the same way many rumors about Chang have spread in the past week — from unnamed sources passing information to the media; this time it was to the Chinese-language Apple Daily.
The paper quoted “a person who knows about the inside information” as saying that Chang was lying when he said he was unclear of the reason he was asked to step down.
Chang was said to have sent a letter to Ma on the morning of Aug. 17, before he issued a statement to the public intimating that he was forced to resign rather than quitting for “family reasons,” as the Executive Yuan said on Aug. 16.
In the letter, according to the anonymous person quoted by the Apple Daily, Chang wrote that MAC Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) told him that he was suspected of leaking information to China when they met on Aug. 14.
Chang said on Thursday that Wang had not told him about the suspicion when Wang asked him to leave the post and offered him a chairman’s role at a state-run company, and nodded when asked whether his assertion meant Wang was lying.
The unnamed person was quoted as saying that the president, not happy about Chang’s conspicuous moves, turned the letter over to the MAC to “restore the truth,” and the MAC later handed the letter to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
The Apple Daily also reported on Friday that the tip-off accusing Chang of leaking information came from a political heavyweight with European and US training.
The Chinese-language United Daily News said an “informed person from the top echelon” has “seriously repudiated the rumor.”
The unnamed official was quoted as saying that the rumormonger had “evil intentions,” as the rumor intended to drag the US into the issue, which would then become a show pitting the US against China.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) on Friday asked Taiwanese media “not to make irresponsible and untrue guesses, lest the cross-strait relationship be negatively impacted.”
Meanwhile, the Global Times, an offshoot of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship paper the People’s Daily, said on Friday in its editorial that it is a “far-fetched” allegation calling the top representative for cross-strait negotiation “a red spy.”
The paper cited several Chinese academics’ opinions about the controversy, who all believed that “the crisis was jointly caused by Ma Ying-jeou’s lack of internal control, Chang’s strong personality and Taiwan’s chaotic political environment,” and disagreed with the “red spy” accusation.
“Even if China was to have spies in Taiwan,” the editorial said light-heartedly, “Chang would not be a fitting selection because his public values — Chang’s anti-Taiwanese-independence stance and enthusiasm for the cross-strait ‘small three links’ — are higher than his going undercover.”
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS