The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday urged President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to express Taiwan’s firm position on its sovereignty in the South China Sea after Beijing’s establishment of a military garrison in the region.
“Ma should condemn Beijing’s unilateral move, which jeopardized regional security, as Vietnam, the Philippines and the US have all expressed similar concerns,” DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
Beijing confirmed on Monday it would establish a military garrison and the government of the newly established city of Sansha (三沙) on Yongxing Island, part of the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島).
Lin said Ma’s silence about recent development in the South China Sea would likely create a false perception that Taiwan takes the same position as China, or even worse — that Taiwan is part of China.
However, Ma, as president, is obligated to reaffirm Taiwan’s sovereignty in the region, in particular since Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island (太平島), the largest of the Spratly Islands, has been included in the administrative zone of Sansha.
The DPP maintains its longstanding position that the issue should be peacefully resolved and a code of conduct in the South China Sea should be established under a multilateral mechanism.
Meanwhile, Lin said the DPP had taken notice of Beijing’s response to DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) comments yesterday, which stated the party’s wish to increase exchanges and mutual understanding with China.
Chinese Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Yang Yi (楊毅) was quoted as saying that “Beijing has been aware of the DPP’s intention for closer exchanges, but if the DPP insists on its position of ‘one country on each side,’ China would strongly oppose that.”
The DPP would be willing to increase bilateral exchanges if there were no preconditions, Lin said, adding that preconditions would only impede interactions for both sides.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching