The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned the Chinese foreign ministry for denigrating Taiwan’s president.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛), during a press conference on Thursday in Beijing, corrected a foreign journalist when the reporter referred to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as “Taiwan’s president”
Before answering a question from the reporter Qin said, “[I] must first correct the flaw in your question. There is only one China in the world. On the matter of cross-strait relations, please be mindful of the use of designations.”
In Taipei, the MOFA made no comment until yesterday.
MOFA Deputy foreign minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) condemned Qin’s remarks, stating the Republic of China is a sovereign independent nation and the country’s president must be respected and referred to by his proper official title at all times.
He also rebutted a report by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) that said Ma’s offer of a “diplomatic truce” with Beijing has been counter-productive and inept.
The report cited the statistic posted on the MOFA Web site that in the six months since Ma took office on May 20 there have been at least 13 incidents where China bullied Taiwan in public settings.
The figure far surpassed the period from January to June under the previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The report also accused the Ma administration of begging for Beijing’s mercy regarding Taiwan’s international space and participation.
“This is absolutely not the case. We are not at the mercy of Beijing and we are not pining for Beijing’s charity,” Hsia said.
The Ma administration, Hsia said, continues to seek for a viable way in which both Taipei and Beijing can forge a compromise to augment Taiwan’s international space in a dignified manner.
He added that since Ma’s May inauguration, there have been more than 60 incidents where China had demonstrated goodwill towards Taiwan.
He gave the example of National Taiwan University professor Lo Chang-fa’s (羅昌發) appointment as a member of the Permanent Group of Experts at the World Trade Organization’s Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.
Lo and a Chinese national were appointed at the same time when both the Taiwanese and the Chinese delegation agreed not to veto each other’s candidate.
MOFA argued that prior to the “diplomatic truce,” China would rather forgo such opportunity than allow a Taiwanese national to have a position in an international organization.
At a separate setting yesterday, DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said that Beijing’s demand that Taiwan’s participation in this year’s APEC forum be handled in line with its “one China” principle proves that Ma’s diplomatic truce approach has been futile.
Cheng urged Ma to avoid “wishful thinking” and end what he called unilateral compromise.
He said Beijing was unlikely to allow Taiwan to join international organizations that require statehood due to its firmly held “one China” principle.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts yesterday apologized for forbidding children from copying paintings by freehand drawing, saying it welcomes visitors to make sketches of paintings on drawing tablets or sketchpads. The museum issued the remark after a museumgoer nicknamed “Mickeyelk Gesner” on Thursday posted on Facebook that her son had been sketching a painting by Pablo Picasso on a tablet computer at the exhibition “Capturing the Moment” on Wednesday when a museum worker told him to stop drawing. “The staff told us, ‘Only taking photos is allowed. No copying. This is a rule,’” she quoted the worker as saying. Physician Lee Chia-yan
ACCESS DENIAL: Beijing would likely take formation in the Philippine Sea, outside Taipei’s missile range, while its forces on the east would be a deterrent to foreign aid China is increasingly likely to employ a strategy of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) around Taiwan, which would use three carrier groups, a report from the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. When China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, is completed next year, China would have three carriers, which would likely be used to surround Taiwan and implement an A2/AD strategy, it said, adding that efforts to strengthen China’s two other carriers — the Liaoning and the Shandong — appear to corroborate this. In the quarterly report, the council cited declassified documents from the Ministry of National Defense that categorized China’s carriers as
Two German warships are awaiting orders from Berlin to determine whether they would be the first German naval vessels in decades to pass through the Taiwan Strait next month, at the risk of stoking tensions with Beijing, a German commander said. While the US and other nations, including Canada, have sent warships through the narrow strait in recent weeks, it would be the German navy’s first passage through the Strait since 2002. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, and says it has jurisdiction over the nearly 180km waterway that divides the two sides. Taiwan strongly objects to these claims, saying only its people
Former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley yesterday called for more international backing for Taiwan and a coordinated pushback against China’s claims over the nation. “The United States should elevate Taiwan on the world stage. You should no longer be silenced in global affairs,” Haley told an audience at the Ketagalan Forum, a Taipei conference focused on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. She called for Taiwan to become a full member of the UN, even though it is being blocked by China from representation in international bodies. While the US does not formally recognize Taiwan, it is the nation's strongest