People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should rise above their differences and seek cooperation when dealing with foreign affairs, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Wang Yi (王毅) said yesterday, in a call that received a lukewarm response from Taipei.
According to reports by the China-based China News Service, Wang made the remark during his speech at the first Yunnan-Taiwan Economic and Cultural Seminar held in Kunming, China, yesterday.
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and former KMT vice chairman Lin Fong-cheng (林豐正) attended the symposium.
“More than six decades ago, when the Chinese Expeditionary Force [during the Second Sino-Japanese War] fought against the Japanese aggressors in Western Yunnan, [their fortitude and bravery] were so magnificent and touching that [they] were etched in history and in the common memory of the people on both sides,” Wang said.
Wang said that whatever complex issues lie between people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, they should transcend their differences and work together in defending the fundamental and overall interests of the Chinese people.
In the face of the profound international changes, Wang also called on people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to act in the interest of ensuring the prosperity of the Chinese people, ensuring the peaceful development of cross-strait ties and maintaining regional stability.
Wang’s comments came amid an escalating territorial dispute over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), a resource-rich island group in the East China Sea claimed by Taiwan and China, as well as Japan, which calls them the Senkaku Islands. The dispute heated up after the Japanese government paid ¥2.05 billion (US$26 million) for three of the islands in the chain on Tuesday last week in an effort to nationalize the archipelago.
The move prompted an angry rebuke from the Chinese government, which accused Japan of “playing with fire,” galvanizing a new wave of anti-Japan sentiment and demonstrations in several cities across China over the past few days.
However, Wang’s proposal did not appear to be welcome by his Taiwanese counterpart, as Mainland Affairs Council Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) reiterated yesterday her stance on Sept. 9 during a visit to London that Taiwan would not cooperate with China on the issue.
“The Republic of China has indisputable sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands. In light of the long-running sovereignty dispute across the Taiwan Strait, the idea of cross-strait cooperation to resolve the territorial row is unseemly,” Lai said.
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
ALLEGED SABOTAGE: The damage inflicted by the vessel did not affect connection, as data were immediately rerouted to other cables, Chunghwa Telecom said Taiwan suspects that a Chinese-owned cargo vessel damaged an undersea cable near its northeastern coast on Friday, in an alleged act of sabotage that highlights the vulnerabilities of Taipei’s offshore communications infrastructure. The ship is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company whose director is Chinese, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. An unidentified Taiwanese official cited in the report described the case as sabotage. The incident followed another Chinese vessel’s suspected involvement in the breakages of data cables in the Baltic Sea in November last year. While fishing trawlers are known to sometimes damage such equipment, nation states have also