The Presidential Office yesterday urged the public to refrain from speculation following reports that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) plans to meet with US president-elect Donald Trump when traveling to Central America on a state visit next month.
“Regarding media reports today [yesterday] that the president plans to meet with president-elect Trump and his team during a state visit next month, they are all just wild speculation,” the office said in a statement.
Details of any overseas state visit by Tsai or Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) would be made public after they are confirmed and finalized, it added.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday cited an anonymous source as saying that Tsai plans to visit Central American diplomatic ally Nicaragua next month to attend the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and is expected to make a transit stop in New York.
“[Tsai’s aides] are working to secure a meeting with US Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who has been named as Trump’s White House chief of staff,” the report said. “They also do not rule out a meeting with Trump.”
The report followed a historic telephone call between Tsai and Trump on Friday, which lasted about 10 minutes and was focused mainly on economic development and improving Taiwan’s national defense.
It was the first publicly reported call between a Taiwanese leader and a US president or president-elect since Washington severed official diplomatic ties with Taipei in 1979 and switched recognition to Beijing.
Citing another source familiar with the matter who also requested anonymity, the report said that while the public has questioned whether the Tsai administration had “bet on the wrong US presidential candidate” following Trump’s unexpected electoral victory, Tsai has already established a line of communication with Trump’s camp through the Washington-based Heritage Foundation’s founder Edwin Feulner and the nation’s representative office in the US capital.
The source was quoted as saying that at the time, the administration’s priority was getting Tsai and Trump to talk on the telephone, adding that, despite positive responses from the Trump camp during initial communication, the Presidential Office remained discreet about the matter.
Trump’s open acknowledgment of the call on Twitter caught Tsai’s team by surprise, the source said.
The Tsai administration hopes that an in-person interaction with Trump could provide a further boost to Taiwan-US relations, the report said, adding that National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) allegedly made a visit to the US recently to negotiate a possible meeting.
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,
A registered sex offender from the US who went missing after entering Taiwan has been found and would be deported in light of the risk he poses to the public, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday. The agency launched a search for Levi Forrest Wallace, 43, after it was informed by the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT) that he had entered Taiwan on Oct. 2 on a tourist visa. He was not on the US government’s wanted list. Wallace was sentenced to 90 days in jail with a two-year probation in 2001 after he was convicted of sexual delinquency of
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