A Beijing official made a grave mistake when he said everything is negotiable between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) if the DPP gives up on independence, pro-independence DPP politicians said yesterday.
“He had it backwards. Everything is negotiable between the two parties if China gives up the idea of unifying Taiwan,” Legislator Mark Chen (陳唐山) told a press conference.
Chen was referring to a comment made by National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference chairman Yu Zhengsheng (俞正聲) in a recent interview with a Taiwanese media outlet.
A former foreign minister, Chen said that the key element of cross-strait engagement is reciprocity, adding that if Beijing were serious about further engaging with Taiwan, it would need to understand what is on the mind of Taiwanese and respect Taiwan’s current de facto independence.
Citing a comment made by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) during his visit to Germany that the sovereignty of Taiwan had been returned to China under the Potsdam Declaration in 1945 and the Cairo Declaration in 1943, former DPP legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) said Li’s remark showed a “lack of basic knowledge of international law.”
The status of Taiwan was neither determined in Potsdam and Cairo nor in San Francisco, where the Treaty of San Francisco was signed between Japan and part of the Allied powers in 1951, because the Chinese Civil War meant that the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could not represent China at the time, Chai said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
‘MALIGN PURPOSE’: Governments around the world conduct espionage operations, but China’s is different, as its ultimate goal is annexation, a think tank head said Taiwan is facing a growing existential threat from its own people spying for China, experts said, as the government seeks to toughen measures to stop Beijing’s infiltration efforts and deter Taiwanese turncoats. While Beijing and Taipei have been spying on each other for years, experts said that espionage posed a bigger threat to Taiwan due to the risk of a Chinese attack. Taiwan’s intelligence agency said China used “diverse channels and tactics” to infiltrate the nation’s military, government agencies and pro-China organizations. The main targets were retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology to steal
RSS