Claiming that China is not going to change its policy toward Taiwan no matter how much goodwill Taiwan extends, President Chen Shui-bian (
"My experience over the past six years shows that whichever party rules Taiwan it is the same to China -- unless we were to accept unification," Chen said in the latest issue of his e-newsletter, which is to be published today.
The president made the comments in an article dedicated to cross-strait negotiation pioneers -- China's Wang Daohan (汪道涵), its top negotiator with Taiwan who died last month, and the late Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫), who passed away in December 2004.
Wang, the president of China's Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), held the first high-level cross-strait talks with Koo.
Chen said in the article that China has moved back to the "one China" principle, which inevitably results in a deadlock in cross-strait relations.
"Many people attribute the friction between the two sides to what Taiwan says and does. However, the fact is that China's totalitarian dictatorship has barricaded the road leading to peaceful cross-strait relations," Chen said.
China is determined to nullify Taiwan's sovereignty, turning it into a special administrative region like Hong Kong, he said.
Chen mentioned China's animosity in detail in the article. He said that Beijing's unchanged ambition to annex Taiwan can be observed in a white paper from August 1993 titled "The Taiwan Question and Reunification of China."
The paper was released in eight languages to promote unification.
Furthermore, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin's (
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but