The policies of “diplomatic truce” and “modus vivendi” were successful strategies that improved cross-strait relations and contributed to the goodwill and respect APEC showed to Taiwan this year, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday.
Ma made the remarks in an interview with M-Radio in Taichung City yesterday, referring to the list of countries and leaders issued by APEC, in which Taiwan was referred to as “Chinese Taipei” while Ma was addressed using his official title, along with his photo.
“This was the first time that the country’s president was introduced in an APEC document and it shows that we have adopted the right strategies of no unification, no independence and no use of force,” Ma said.
Ma appointed former vice president and honorary Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) as the nation’s envoy at this year’s APEC summit meeting in Lima, Peru, making Lien the highest ranking former Taiwanese official to attend the meeting. Lien is scheduled to leave for Lima on Wednesday.
At a separate setting yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed Peru’s gesture as the first APEC host country to publicly refer to Taiwan’s head of state as “president” on the official APEC Web site.
This was also the first time since Taiwan became an APEC member-economy in 1991 that a host country published a picture of a Taiwanese president on the Web site.
“We always welcome any gesture that promotes normalized relations between Taiwan and the international community. Using President Ma Ying-jeou’s picture and his official title as president [on the Web site] is a positive development,” acting ministry spokesman James Chang (章計平) said.
Because of objections from Beijing, Taiwanese presidents are barred from attending one of the grouping’s key policymaking summits, which means that the president must appoint a non-governmental special envoy as his representative.
In past years, Taiwan’s representatives were mostly business leaders or senior economic advisers.
Taiwan’s official national designation, the Republic of China, is still banned from being used at APEC, where Taiwan is known as “Chinese Taipei.”
While pan-green supporters claim the use of “Chinese Taipei” undermines Taiwan’s sovereign status, the pan-blue camp views it as a satisfactory compromise in exchange for Taiwan’s participation in the organization.
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
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
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
RSS