Where frosty relations between China and Japan are concerned, the pen is mightier than the sword.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) appeared to make clear his continuing displeasure with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi when he ignored Koizumi's request to borrow his pen at a signing ceremony yesterday at the East Asia Summit in Malaysia.
Wen had already refused to formally meet one-on-one with Koizumi at the summit amid a feud over the Japanese leader's visits to a shrine honoring war dead, including those executed for war crimes committed in China and elsewhere.
PHOTO: EPA
As leaders of the newly inaugurated East Asia Summit were signing a declaration on the group's establishment, Koizumi, seated next to Wen, leaned over and asked to borrow his pen.
Wen ignored him for several seconds until Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, smiling broadly, intervened to repeat the request.
Wen then passed the pen to Koizumi with a smile, but the incident was widely noted amid an otherwise uneventful ceremony that concluded the 16-nation summit's formal business.
The snub came just a day after Koizumi said that he failed to understand why Wen had allowed the disagreement to spoil their meeting.
"No two nations are without their share of differences. I cannot understand why China won't have a meeting because of one problem," Koizumi said.
Wen on Monday had said Koizumi was fully responsible for the freeze in high-level contacts because his five visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine while serving as prime minister had "deeply hurt the feelings of the Chinese people."
Wen has ignored most of Koizumi's attempts at affability during the summit's group photos and other public events, although the men did banter about seafood during a luncheon on Monday.
Addressing a news conference later, Abdullah refused to comment on the incident.
"Don't read into body language. I don't want to read into that," Abdullah said.
However, he added, that the China-Japan row had not affected the summit.
"They were participating in the discussions. They were sitting together ... they will sort it out," he said.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS