Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) is set to embark on a symbolic yet controversial visit to China today for what has been described as an “ice breaking” trip to promote better relations between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and China.
“Hopefully, footprints I make today will become a trail for future travelers,” Hsieh said yesterday, referring to his five-day visit to Xiamen and Beijing.
Hsieh, who served as premier and DPP chairman, would be the highest-ranking DPP official to visit China, a country which has always held a hostile view toward the political party.
Hsieh and his delegation are scheduled to visit Xiamen, Fujian Province, where he is expected to pay tribute to his ancestors on Dongshan Island and visit Xiamen University, as well as Taiwanese businesses, today and tomorrow.
He is then to go to Beijing for an international bartending event — the main purpose of his trip — where he is to visit Beijing National Stadium, nicknamed “the Bird’s Nest,” as well as attending a closed-door meeting with academics from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences before returning to Taiwan on Monday.
The former premier stressed that he would visit China in his private capacity as chairman of the Taiwan Reform Foundation and that there would be “no public political events” in his itinerary so “people should look at this as an ordinary trip.”
However, Hsieh was well aware of the symbolic and political meaning of the trip — which originated after he was invited by the the International Bartenders’ Association to attend a bartending competition — and what prompted him to describe the trip as “a new page of sharing and mutual trust.”
Hsieh did not disclose whether he would meet with any Chinese official during the visit.
Most DPP members, including DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and former chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), wished Hsieh luck on the trip, saying the visit could be a positive first step en route to a better DPP-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) relationship in the future, which has been widely seen as an important factor for the DPP to win people’s trust in its capability to deal with cross-strait relations after its defeat in the January presidential election.
DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said yesterday after the party’s weekly Central Standing Committee meeting that people should not place “political responsibilities” on Hsieh’s shoulder, given that it is a private visit.
However, pro-independence groups expressed concerns toward the visit yesterday as the visit could be interpreted as Taiwan’s collaboration with China for a coalition against Japan on the dispute over Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台).
The visit will be a trip of high political implication and Hsieh, as well as lawmakers and elected officials in the delegation, should never jeopardize Taiwanese sovereignty in their exchanges with the Chinese, the Taiwan Friends Association said in a press release yesterday.
World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI) Chairman Chen Nan-tien (陳南天) expressed WUFI’s opposition to the trip in a press release on Tuesday night, saying that despite it officially not opposing the visit, the timing is not right for such a visit.
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
RSS