Taiwan has informed the South African government that it would not relocate its representative office Pretoria before the end of this month as requested, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday.
“Our office is still in operation and will stay in the capital,” Lin told lawmakers during a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.
The South African government unilaterally contravened an agreement it signed with Taipei in 1997, after Pretoria announced in December 1996 its intention to establish relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Lin said.
Photo: Screen grab from Google Maps
The agreement stipulates that Taiwan would continue to operate a liaison office in Pretoria despite the end of official diplomatic ties, while South Africa is permitted to have a presence in Taipei, he said.
South Africa is legally bound to follow that agreement, he said, adding that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has made its stance clear to Pretoria.
The ministry last week confirmed that the South African government had asked Taiwan to relocate its representative office in Pretoria before the end of this month, allegedly due to pressure from China.
The ministry was still trying to persuade the South African government to withdraw its request, as such a move would be detrimental to the countries’ cordial bilateral exchanges in trade, education and technology, it said.
After South Africa severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in January 1998, the government established a representative office in Pretoria called the Taipei Liaison Office in the Republic of South Africa. Taiwan has a branch office in Cape Town called the Taipei Liaison Office, while there is also the Liaison Office of South Africa in Taipei.
The South African government first asked the Taipei office in Pretoria to relocate last year following a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for last year’s BRICS summit, Lin said.
Last month, Beijing hosted the annual Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, attended by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
On those occasions, “China continued to exert pressure,” Lin said.
In April, South Africa officially asked the Taipei office to leave its capital before the end of this month.
It sent an ultimatum to the Taipei office on Oct. 7, indicating that if the office does not move out of Pretoria before the end of this month, it would be forced to close.
The issue was “nonnegotiable,” it said.
Over the past few months, many like-minded countries, including the US, Japan and the Czech Republic, have tried to convince Pretoria to reverse its decision, Lin said.
South African political leaders and some media also voiced concerns over the decision, he said.
While the South African government is a coalition, some lawmakers have said they were unhappy with its decision regarding Taiwan, saying it failed to consult with all coalition members beforehand.
Taipei has prepared contingency plans if the office is forced to leave Pretoria by the deadline, including asking the South African office in Taiwan to relocate out of Taipei, Lin said.
In a news release issued on Friday, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation said its request that the Taipei office leave Pretoria is “consistent with resolution 2758 of the United Nations General Assembly, which is widely adhered to by the international community.”
It also said it has provided “a reasonable six months to make the move.”
UN Resolution 2758, adopted in 1971 to address the issue of China’s representation in the world body, resulted in the Republic of China losing its seat in the global body to the PRC. The resolution did not address the status of Taiwan.
STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: China would not blockade Taiwan, because President Xi respects him, and Russia would not have invaded if he were president, he said Former US president and the Republican candidate in next month’s presidential election Donald Trump said he would impose additional tariffs on China if China were to “go into Taiwan,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150 percent to 200 percent,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with the WSJ published on Friday. Asked if he would use military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China, Trump said it would not come to that because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) respected
HACKERS’ MARKET: Chat logs about Taiwan and documents outlining ways to take over online accounts were leaked from a company that sells data from hacks Taiwanese cybersecurity specialists found 577 leaked documents which show that the Chinese Communist Party is engaging in “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, a documentary released last month by Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed. The filmmakers behind Tracking China’s Leaked Documents said they spent six months visiting seven countries, including Taiwan, where they interviewed members of TeamT5, a malware research and cybersecurity firm, which found the leaked documents. TeamT5 said they discovered a string of mysterious URLs on the social media platform X, which they suspected could be accounts created by hackers or people who leaked data, which led
The Taipei Department of Transportation discouraged YouBike 2.0E users from taking them on long-distance trips after a Taipei city councilor said that riders often use the new electric bike, YouBike 2.0E, to climb Yangmingshan (陽明山). Taipei earlier this year began offering the first 30 minutes of YouBike 2.0 rentals for free, with Taipei and New Taipei offering the YouBike 2.0E on Aug. 30 to encourage rider usage. For YouBike 2.0, the rate is NT$10 per 30 minutes within the first four hours, NT$20 per 30 minutes for five to eight hours and NT$40 per 30 minutes after eight hours. Meanwhile, for e-bikes,
RESOURCE RICH: Taiwan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and has up to 30 gigawatts of the potential energy, of which 10 gigawatts could be economically viable Academia Sinica and CPC Corp yesterday began drilling the nation’s first deep geothermal well in Yilan County’s Yuanshan Township (員山). The 4km-deep well is expected to take 18 months to complete and has an estimated investment of NT$337 million (US$10.54 million), Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said. “While Taiwan has up to 30 gigawatts of potential deep geothermal energy, with an estimated 10 gigawatts being economically viable, only by digging wells can we determine the actual amount of commercially viable geothermal energy,” Liao said at the project’s opening ceremony. Data collected during and after the excavation process would be used for future