Contrary to expectations, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not likely to change its cross-strait policy during its 19th National Congress, which is scheduled to begin on Wednesday, Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace vice president for studies Douglas Paal said.
Paal, who served as director of the American Institute in Taiwan from 2002 to 2006, yesterday said that he reached the conclusion after speaking with several Chinese officials.
“I have been spending a lot of time trying to talk to people who have Taiwan-related positions in the People’s Republic of China’s official circles. So far they have been more reassuring than frightening in terms of continuity — no big changes,” Paal said on the sidelines of a meeting of Asia-Pacific think-tank leaders in Taipei organized by the Institute for National Policy Research.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
However, it remains to be seen whether the officials’ view is in line with that of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), whose mandate is expected to be renewed at the congress in Beijing, he added.
There has been wide speculation regarding how Xi intends to proceed with the Taiwan issue. Some have predicted a hard-line shift, while others have floated the possibility of a military invasion.
In comparison, Paal seemed sanguine about cross-strait development, saying that he hopes Beijing would be willing to work patiently with Taipei and that the Taiwanese government could find a political basis for resuming some of the semi-official connections that were established by the previous Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration.
“But this takes two sides to cooperate and we have to see how [China] develops its leadership and policy during and after the party congress,” he said.
China is overdue in developing better relations with its neighbors, having spent the past 15 years brawling with Japan, Vietnam and most recently India, Paal said.
When asked whether it is feasible for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to engage in friendly interactions and cooperation under the APEC framework, as President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has suggested, Paal did not give a direct answer.
He instead said he was confident that Xi will “afford respect” to People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), who is set to attend next month’s APEC summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, on Tsai’s behalf.
“It is an opportunity for Taiwan to be represented with all the other nations participating, including [US President] Donald Trump,” he added.
A Taiwanese president has not attended the APEC leadership meeting since the nation became a member of the bloc in 1991 due to obstruction by Beijing.
The highest-level officials to represent the nation’s president at the annual summit were former vice presidents Lien Chan (連戰) and Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) of the KMT.
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
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 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
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS