Taiwan has already lost out to China even before it enters into formal negotiations with Beijing next week, said former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) chairman Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) yesterday, expressing his pessimism about the KMT administration’s strategy on cross-strait issues.
“Frankly, it is heartbreaking to see what the new administration has done to what we [the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government] had so painstakingly established in the last eight years,” he said in a meeting with the press.
Chen, a major figure in the talks on direct-charter flights during the DPP era, said after extensive negotiations with Beijing, his team had successfully clinched direct cargo flights but the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) surrendered these soon after the party took power this March.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
“Direct cargo flights benefit Taiwan more than they benefit China and that’s why Beijing was very reluctant about agreeing to them. But we insisted very strongly that all three [direct passenger and cargo flights and opening Taiwan for Chinese tourists] must be bound together,” Chen said, letting out a sigh.
“It is like someone giving you a piece of candy that has one-third of it missing and the missing part is the chocolate cover, the best part of the candy,” he said.
The quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), however, is slated to meet with its Chinese counterpart, the Association on Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), in Beijing to sign a deal on only two issues — commencing direct weekend passenger-flights and allowing Chinese tourists to come to Taiwan by next month.
“Now the KMT has abandoned the cargo flights. What will Taiwan do next to get them back?” he asked rhetorically, saying the KMT had dug their own grave because “it was the KMT that trashed all the existing communication channels when it took office.”
“Since the KMT was the one that wanted to start the negotiation process from scratch with a brand new team of negotiators, the Chinese are not obliged to continue to honor the commitments it made in the previous negotiations,” he said.
MAC Deputy Chairman Fu Tung-cheng (傅棟成), however, argued that the government had not “lost” cargo flight as accused, but rather cargo flights have been temporarily halted because of recent fuel hikes.
Chen said this was nonsense and that if increased oil prices were the cause of the suspension of cargo flights, then passenger flights should be suspended as well.
Chen said the next thing to watch is the content of the joint declaration that SEF and ARATS are expected to sign next week.
Chen, who has returned to his teaching post at National Taiwan University, predicted Beijing would manipulate the content of the declaration by including the agreement signed in 2005 between then KMT chairman Lian Chan (連戰) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in his capacity as the Chinese Communist Party leader.
Among the five-point “vision for cross-strait peace” agreement inked between Lien and Hu, both parties oppose Taiwanese independence.
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