China is forcing Taiwanese businesspeople to attend an economic summit between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a top Mainland Affairs Council official said yesterday.
Council Chairman Joseph Wu (
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) reported yesterday that the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) of China's State Council had issued an order to the heads of more than 80 Taiwanese business associations in China to attend the forum.
The office warned that failure to comply would result in stiff penalties, the report said.
The office has also ordered Taiwanese businesses nationwide to mobilize in Xiamen and Shanghai to greet former KMT chairman Lien Chan (
The Liberty Times report said that many of the associations are angry that they are being coerced to participate in what they called a meaningless event.
Wu said the Mainland Affairs Council has verified that official letters were sent to the heads of Taiwanese associations requesting they attend the forum.
"We disapprove of China's actions, which greatly bothers Taiwan's businesspeople," Wu said.
When Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) met with Lien last year, Chinese officials only demanded that Taiwanese businesspeople in Shanghai show up to support Lien's visit.
According to the Liberty Times story, Hu then hosted a banquet for more than 100 Taiwanese businesspeople, but made a quick exit along with other top Chinese officials, leaving his "guests" to foot the bill.
Wu also warned the KMT yesterday that the Mainland Affairs Council will not recognize any conclusions reached at forum on issues that involve government authority such as cross-strait charter flights.
"Taiwanese officials' participation cannot be ruled out for any negotiations that require governmental authority. Otherwise they [such negotiations] would be illegal and ineffective," Wu said.
He said China is using a "carrot and stick" strategy, only it was just paying "lip service" instead of carrots. Most of its promises or goodwill attempts are "not true," he said.
"But the `stick part' that China is implementing could not be more genuine," he said. "Its suppression of Taiwan's diplomatic space and its military build-up never stop."
Wu said that Beijing continues to take advantage of the confrontation between Taiwan's ruling and opposition parties and manipulates the conflicts in order to divide this country and besmirch its sovereignty.
"Coupling military threats and sweeteners is China's new strategy for dealing with Taiwan," Wu said.
In response to pan-green criticism about the CCP-KMT forum, KMT caucus whip Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛) called on the government not to thwart an effort to boost the economy and rescue the poor.
"The five issues for the forum -- advancing cross-strait economic and financial exchanges and agricultural cooperation, opening Taiwan to Chinese tourists, and implementation of direct links -- are irrelevant to politics," Pan said.
Given that the government has made pursuing independence its priority and has no ideas to boost the economy, the KMT is obliged to take initiative to improve cross-strait relations, Pan said.
KMT Legislator Kuo Su-chun (
"[The pan-green camp] is incapable of improving cross-strait relations, and so they do not want to see other people succeed," he said.
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus whip David Huang (
Huang urged Lien to make public this week's discussions with Hu upon this return. He also said the former KMT boss must protest China's military threats toward Taiwan.
TSU Secretary-General Lo Chih-ming (
Lo also criticized the government, saying it was "incredible' that an administration with an "active management and effective opening" policy would allow Lien to go to Beijing again.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has