Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani on Tuesday said that his nation is aligned with the EU and NATO in opposing changes to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, after China announced a diplomatic trip to Rome.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday said that Wang Yi (王毅), director of the Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission, would be visiting France, Italy, Hungary and Russia from Tuesday to Wednesday next week.
He is also scheduled to speak at the Munich Security Conference in Germany this weekend, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is likely to attend.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It is Wang’s first overseas trip since assuming China’s top diplomatic position on Jan. 1, following a decade as minister of foreign affairs from 2013 to last year.
Speaking at a forum at Libera Universita Internazionale degli Studi Sociali in Rome on Tuesday, Tajani confirmed that Wang would visit Italy next week, Italian news site Le Formiche reported.
Tajani then issued a message to China, saying that “the status quo must be maintained in the Indo-Pacific; we are committed to this with NATO and the EU.”
“Taipei must remain as it is,” the report quoted him as saying, an apparent reference to China’s aim of unification with Taiwan.
“There must be no temptation to do elsewhere what Russia has done in Ukraine,” he added.
The issue was also raised in a meeting in December last year between Tajani and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, when they declared their “opposition to unilateral efforts to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” a US press release at the time said.
In an interview with Le Formiche on Saturday, Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Maria Tripodi said that China “is an issue on the global political agenda.”
“China has progressively tightened its grip on Taiwan through exercises in the neighboring air and sea space,” Tripodi said. “Combined with increasing investments in the Pacific area, penetrating into European ports and the Horn of Africa, all of this cannot but generate concern in neighboring countries.”
Wang likely has two goals in visiting Rome next week, Le Formiche reported.
The first is to set the groundwork for a potential visit to Beijing by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was invited by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia in November last year, it said.
Wang is also likely to pursue the extension of a Belt and Road Initiative agreement with Italy, which is to expire in March next year, it said.
If no action is taken by either side by the end of this year, the agreement is to renew automatically.
Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has died of pneumonia at the age of 48 while on a trip to Japan, where she contracted influenza during the Lunar New Year holiday, her sister confirmed today through an agent. "Our whole family came to Japan for a trip, and my dearest and most kindhearted sister Barbie Hsu died of influenza-induced pneumonia and unfortunately left us," Hsu's sister and talk show hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) said. "I was grateful to be her sister in this life and that we got to care for and spend time with each other. I will always be grateful to
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
REMINDER: Of the 6.78 million doses of flu vaccine Taiwan purchased for this flu season, about 200,000 are still available, an official said, following Big S’ death As news broke of the death of Taiwanese actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), also known as Big S (大S), from severe flu complications, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and doctors yesterday urged people at high risk to get vaccinated and be alert to signs of severe illness. Hsu’s family yesterday confirmed that the actress died on a family holiday in Japan due to pneumonia during the Lunar New Year holiday. CDC Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) told an impromptu news conference that hospital visits for flu-like illnesses from Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 reached 162,352 — the highest
RSS