Among the many tasks facing Pope Benedict XVI is to decide whether the Vatican should maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan or resume ties with China.
China and Taiwan are anxious for a Vatican decision on diplomatic recognition, and both lined up as suitors on Wednesday following the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
"We hope under the leadership of the new pope, the Vatican side can create favorable conditions for improving bilateral ties," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦鋼) said in a statement.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
But he repeated Beijing's precondition for resuming ties -- that the Vatican must sever diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and must not intervene in China's domestic affairs.
President Chen Shui-bian (
The Vatican is one of the 25 mostly small nations recognizing the Republic of China. But it has been rumored to be planning to abandon Taiwan and resume ties with China, causing anxiety in Taipei.
Just one week before Pope John Paul died, a Vatican envoy visited Beijing and met with Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu (
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported recently that China may give up control of its church in order to resume ties with the Vatican.
Taiwan is worried that a Vatican recognition of China could prompt its other 24 allies to shift diplomatic allegiance also, further increasing Taiwan's international isolation.
But some Taiwanese scholars dismissed the concerns.
"Resuming ties with China is not on the priority list for the new Pope. He has more urgent tasks to handle, like healing the division within the Church," said Liu Bi-rong (劉必榮), a professor of politics at Soochow University.
"Even if the Vatican drops Taiwan, I don't think it will have a domino effect on our other allies because each country has its own needs and considerations," he said.
The Vatican could also establish formal ties with China under a special arrangement, such as opening an embassy in Beijing while maintaining its mission in Taipei with a lower level of diplomatic representation.
"It is very easy for the Vatican to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China; it only has to announce that its embassy in China has re-opened," one Taiwanese diplomat suggested.
The struggle for the control of the Chinese Catholic Church could also be solved with a compromise, the diplomat said.
"They can reach an agreement so that China can give the Vatican a list of candidates for bishops, and let the Pope make the appointments," the diplomat said.
Since the founding of the PRC in 1949, China has been appointing bishops for its church, but some 4 million Chinese Catholics remain loyal to the Vatican and pray secretly in underground churches or "family churches."
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US