China’s demand that the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) remove a reference to Taiwan from a communique issued on Friday last week is consistent with Beijing’s efforts to limit Taipei’s international participation, a US government spokesperson said on Wednesday.
The 18-member inter-governmental organization held its 53rd summit in Tonga last week. Despite being a nonmember, Taiwan has been a participant as a “development partner” at the annual event since 1993. Taiwan’s status was established based on a 1992 PIF Leaders’ Communique and was reaffirmed in 1999 and 2010.
When the forum wrapped up, the PIF posted a joint communique on its Web site that contained a line reaffirming the decades-long arrangements regarding Taiwan.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Leaders at the forum reaffirmed the 1992 leaders decision on relations with Taiwan/Republic of China,” the PIF was quoted as saying in paragraph 66 of the communique.
However, later in the day, the communique was removed from the Web site. It was republished the next day, but paragraph 66 about Taiwan is no longer included.
Before the Taiwan reference was removed, New Zealand media participating in the summit reported witnessing Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, the PIF chairman, promising Chinese Ambassador to the Pacific Qian Bo (錢波) that “we’ll remove it,” referring to the mention of Taiwan in the communique.
Qian told journalists that the reference to Taiwan “must be a mistake” and “must be corrected.”
Soon after, the document was taken down from the Web site, Radio New Zealand reported on Tuesday.
A US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mailed response on Wednesday that Washington has been “tracking reports of changes in the forum’s communique to remove references to Taiwan.”
“The PRC’s efforts to pressure Pacific Island countries to remove this reference fit a pattern of PRC coercion to constrain Taiwan’s international position,” the e-mail said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
The spokesperson wrote that Taiwan is a “highly capable, engaged, democratic and responsible member of the global community.”
“We all stand to benefit from Taiwan’s expertise to address some of today’s most difficult global challenges, and we will continue to support Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations,” they added.
Despite the incident, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that removing the line supporting Taiwan would not affect the nation’s status in the organization or its right to participation.
Asked about the incident during a news conference in Taipei on Tuesday, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光), who led a delegation to attend a PIF summit side event last week, said he believed the removed portion of the communique was in fact “a draft version and was posted online before it was cleared to be made public.”
The reference to Taiwan only reiterated the 1992 decision, but China still could not accept it and “unreasonably” asked the PIF to remove the paragraph, Tien said.
Also during this year’s summit, the Solomon Islands, a former Taiwan ally that ditched Taipei for Beijing in 2019, proposed preventing Taiwan from attending future PIF events, allegedly on China’s instructions, the ministry said in a press release.
The proposal was later rejected thanks to the support of Taiwan’s three allies in the PIF — the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau — as well as Australia and New Zealand, the ministry said.
It is expected that Taiwan would face some “difficulties and obstacles” next year when the Solomon Islands hosts the PIF summit, Tien said on Tuesday, without elaborating.
However, Taiwan, a PIF partner for 29 years, would continue to do its best to participate in the organization, he added.
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
RSS