President-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday that he favored a bid for the country’s World Health Assembly (WHA) observer status with the name “Chinese Taipei.”
“There is no better name than ‘Chinese Taipei’ for the moment,” Ma said in an interview with the state-owned Central News Agency (CNA) yesterday.
The WHA, the WHO’s governing body, is scheduled to open May 19 in Geneva, one day before Ma’s inauguration. It is seen as the first crucial test of the relationship between China and Ma’s administration.
Government Information Office Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) said last week that applying to become an observer at the WHA is this year’s “first priority,” and the name the country should use had yet to be determined.
But Ma told the CNA yesterday that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had recently asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare a bid to apply for WHO full membership under the name Taiwan.
Ma said he strongly opposed the idea of application for full membership under the name Taiwan, a strategy the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government adopted last year. Ma referred to the DPP’s approach as a “total embarrassment,” that resulted in a WHO delegate of an allied country avoiding the vote on the application under the pretext of having diarrhea.
“It is expected that applying for WHO membership in the name ‘Taiwan’ is doomed to fail. It’s unfair to us that Chen gave such an order,” Ma said, adding the DPP government is stepping down soon and it should not push hard for the WHO full membership proposal under the name Taiwan.
When asked about the name issue in the interview yesterday, Ma said, “Has there been any success [in joining international organizations] by using any names other than ‘Chinese Taipei?’ Except for the even worse ‘Taipei, China,’ is there a more acceptable name than ‘Chinese Taipei?’”
Referring to the title Taiwan uses in the International Olympic Committee and the WTO, Ma said he believes that “Chinese Taipei” is workable, noting that even Beijing has not objected to that name.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
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The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
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