President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) “diplomatic truce” with China has not benefited Taiwan as his administration claims, former diplomats from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
Ma embarked on a 12-day trip to Africa on Saturday night, visiting the nation’s three diplomatic allies of Burkina Faso, Gambia and Swaziland for the first time since taking office in 2008.
Officials have described Ma’s refueling stop in Mumbai, India, the first ever visit to that country by a Taiwanese president, as a “diplomatic breakthrough” and an example of the benefits that have come from Ma’s “diplomatic truce.”
“The brief stop should not be viewed as a breakthrough, but part of normal engagement between two countries,” former representative to the US Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on the sidelines of a forum in Taipei yesterday.
Diplomacy values continuity above everything else, Wu said, adding that while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had criticized the former DPP administration for what it said was “checkbook diplomacy,” Ma’s foreign policy remained “pretty much the same.”
The president did not take time to visit the nation’s allies in Africa until the final year of his first term in office, which means that he does not value the friendship with those countries, Wu added.
Meanwhile, former National Security Council deputy secretary-general Parris Chang (張旭成) said yesterday that Ma’s diplomatic truce with China had placed the nation’s 23 diplomatic allies in a dilemma.
Some allies want to switch recognition to Beijing, but China has declined such overtures, which means “the diplomatic truce is not really a truce at all,” Chang said.
Separately yesterday, former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said the refueling stop in India was “at best a minor breakthrough.”
“The glaring problem with Ma’s foreign policy is the lack of any balance as the president has focused on Taiwan’s relationship with China to the exclusion of all others and as a result diplomacy has not been at the heart of his administration,” said Tsai, who was in Lugang (鹿港), Changhua County, yesterday.
The Africa trip is Ma’s sixth foreign trip since becoming president. The last time a Taiwanese head of state visited the continent was former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in 2002.
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 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
RSS