President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will be coming to Washington -- albeit electronically -- at the end of the month to talk about Taiwan's democracy before an audience of US and foreign journalists and others with an interest in East Asian affairs.
Chen will be the guest speaker at the National Press Club in Washington through a videocon-ference from Taipei on May 29, the club announced on Friday.
The event will be a "Morning Newsmaker Breakfast," in which Chen will make a speech followed by a press conference.
wide attendance
Unlike similar functions, which are usually held in regular meeting rooms, Chen's speech will be beamed into the club's main ballroom, indicating that the organizers believe the speech will draw a large attendance.
Chen's address will be titled "Democratic Taiwan: Challenges and Perspectives."
China has already objected to Chen's appearance, said Peter Hickman, the chairman of the speaker's committee at the club, which organized the event.
After hearing of the plans for the event about two weeks ago, the Chinese embassy's press counselor Chu Maoming (朱茂名) invited press club president Jerry Zremski for lunch, where he expressed his complaint, Hickman told the Taipei Times.
Hickman also attended the lunch.
prestigious forum
Chu complained that the press club was "supporting [Taiwan's] position by giving them a prestigious forum," Hickman said, adding that Chu had "repeated that over and over again."
"No, we're not," Hickman said in reply to Chu. "We don't support anybody's position. It's just about freedom of the press and freedom of expression."
But Chu "ignored what we said," Hickman said.
At one point, Chu said that "the people of China are very concerned about this," which the two press club officials thought was a rather "funny" comment.
The Chinese embassy has regularly complained when Taiwanese speakers are invited to the club and always objected to the flying of the Taiwan flag in the club lobby along with the flags of other countries when a Chinese speaker is invited to the facility.
The Taiwan flag has been a fixture of the flag display for as long as anybody here can recall.
Chen's videoconference was arranged "quite a few weeks ago," said Stanley Gao, deputy representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO). All the arrangements were made by the press club, he said.
"They believe that President Chen is definitely a newsmaker," Gao said.
However, Hickman said that TECRO initiated the event by asking the press club to hold it, and that TECRO will be paying for breakfast in the ballroom, which can hold several hundred people.
"We believe this is a wonderful opportunity for Chen to personally address [Taiwan] issues before an American audience, even an international audience, taking advantage of IT and high-technology developments," Gao said.
Regarding China's objections, Gao said: "We think they are making the wrong case. After all, we're talking about the freedom of the press. And the host organization has every right to invite anybody they believe is newsworthy."
"So I think they [Chinese officials] keep barking up the wrong tree," he said.
It will be Chen's first appearance in Washington electronically since September 2005, when the Congressional Human Rights Caucus presented him with its annual human rights award.
Caucus chairman Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, presented Chen with the award on behalf of the group's 250 House members, via closed circuit TV as Chen was in transit in Miami after returning from a trip to Latin America.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS