Taiwan has a great opportunity to improve cross-strait relations, and the opportunity will quickly pass if both sides do not take advantage of it, Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) said yesterday.
The government would like to see a win-win situation created on the economic front and sustainable peace across the Taiwan Strait, he said.
To that end, a comprehensive economic cooperation agreement would prevent Taiwan from being marginalized economically, and the normalization of cross-strait trade would help create such a positive situation, he said.
In pursuing cross-strait peace, he said both sides must sign a peace agreement and establish a military mutual trust mechanism to establish a framework that can be developed upon.
Chiang made the remarks while addressing the Presidential Office’s monthly meeting for top government officials and civil servants.
At a different setting yesterday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) praised joint oil exploration between Japan and China, saying that joint development and resource sharing is the best way for countries with similar problems to find solutions.
Calling the agreement signed between Tokyo and Beijing to jointly explore oil reserves in the East China Sea an “outstanding achievement,” Ma said that about 40 years ago, European countries were fighting over oil reserves in the North Sea. However, they reached an agreement in the 1970s and decided to jointly develop the resources. Years later, Brent North Sea crude has become one of the most important brands in the global oil market, he said.
“It teaches us the lesson that the best way to solve a problem is through joint development and resource sharing,” he told a Japanese delegation attending this year’s Taiwan-Japan Forum.
Ma said that cross-strait relations have seen significant change since he took office. Previous conflicts and tension had been reconciled and there would be peace and prosperity, he said.
When tensions between both sides are reduced, Japan would no longer need to make a tough choice between Taiwan and China, and could instead maintain sound relations with both sides, Ma said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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