Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) promised yesterday to lay the foundations that would enable President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to implement his cross-strait policies and to rebuild mutual trust across the Taiwan Strait during his trip to China next week.
Wu and 16 senior party officials will head to China on Monday at the invitation of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
He is due to meet the Chinese president on Tuesday or Wednesday.
“We will set aside our differences and rebuild mutual trust with China. Economic issues will be given priority over political issues,” Wu told a press conference at KMT headquarters.
Wu, who will be the nation’s first ruling party chairman to visit China, will first travel to Nanjing on Monday to pay homage to Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) at Sun’s tomb and report on the KMT’s election victories.
The delegation will head to Beijing for the meeting with Hu and then to Shanghai to meet with Taiwanese business groups before returning home on May 31.
Wu has said he would not visit Sichuan Province, but will preside over a Buddhist ceremony in Yixing to pray for the quake victims.
Wu said he expected his meeting with Hu to set the foundation for talks between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS). He promised that party-to-party negotiations would not replace the SEF and ARATS.
“I will not sign any documents with Chinese officials. The Chinese Communist Party represents the Chinese government, but a single political party does not represent the government in Taiwan,” Wu said.
Wu said the KMT understood that the SEF and ARATS would be the formal negotiation platform and that the KMT would help Ma seek better ties with China.
Meanwhile, Ma said Wu’s trip would facilitate party-to-party engagement between the ruling parties of Taiwan and China.
“We welcome it,” Ma said at a news conference with the international media.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was questioned by prosecutors for allegedly orchestrating an attack on a taxi driver after he was allegedly driven on a longer than necessary route in a car he disliked. The questioning at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office was ongoing as of press time last night. Police have recommended charges of attempted murder. The legally embattled actor — known for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代) — is under a separate investigation for allegedly using fake medical documents to evade mandatory military service. According to local media reports, police said Wang earlier last year ordered a
President William Lai (賴清德) should protect Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), and stop supporting domestic strife and discord, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrote on Facebook yesterday. US President Donald Trump and TSMC on Monday jointly announced that the company would invest an additional US$100 billion over the next few years to expand its semiconductor manufacturing operations in the US. The TSMC plans have promoted concern in Taiwan that it would effectively lead to the chipmaking giant becoming Americanized. The Lai administration lacks tangible policies to address concerns that Taiwan might follow in Ukraine’s footsteps, Ma wrote. Instead, it seems to think it could
A man in Tainan has been cleared on charges of public insult after giving the middle finger during a road rage incident, as judges deemed the gesture was made “briefly to express negative feelings.” In last week’s ruling at the High Court’s Tainan branch, judges acquitted a driver, surnamed Cheng (程), for an incident along Tainan’s Nanmen Road in September 2023, when Cheng had spotted a place to park his car in an adjacent lane. Cheng slowed down his vehicle to go into reverse, to back into the parking spot, but the car behind followed too closely, as its driver thought Cheng
DEFENSE: The purpose of the exercises is to identify strategies for the government to control risks during tensions, prevent war and bolster national resilience A tabletop exercise series has begun simulating possible scenarios if the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched a war against Taiwan in the guise of a military exercise. The exercise series is jointly organized by National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations, Taiwan Center for Security Studies and Asia-Pacific Policy Research Association. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Yeong-kang (陳永康), former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) director William Stanton and Taiwan Center for Security Studies director Liu Fu-kuo (劉復國) attended the event in Taipei yesterday. Scenarios that would be simulated include changing political circumstances in the US during US President Donald Trump’s tenure
RSS