The Chinese Nationalist Party's(KMT) presidential candidate, Ma Ying-jeou (
"If the two sides of the Strait are to resume negotiations, reach any peace agreement or negotiate any kind of military or mutual trust mechanism, I will first request that China withdraw the missiles deployed along its southeast coast because we are not willing to conduct peace negotiations while we are threatened by missiles," he said when approached by reporters at a conference for Taiwanese businessmen based in China.
He said Taiwan and China should regard freedom and democracy as the foundation for cross-strait dialogue.
In an article in yesterday's Chinese-language United Daily News, Ma said on the 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre that he would particularly like to emphasize the idea of having "freedom and democracy as the mutual `language' of the two sides of the Strait."
Ma said China's reform is limited to issues concerning people's livelihoods, but that it "has not relaxed its oppression of freedom of the press or other human rights."
"Similarly, China is also hostile to the Republic of China [ROC] for its [pursuit] of the right to participate in international affairs. It is particularly hostile regarding issues such as [the ROC's] participation in the WHO and other international bodies," he said.
"This is a violation of the will and the feelings of the Taiwanese people," Ma said in the article. "Today [yesterday] also marks a year until the beginning of the 2008 Beijing Olympics [sic]. We hope China can reconstruct its image through this international event."
"We also hope China can quicken its pace to democracy so as to nurture a new cross-strait dialogue," the article quoted him as saying.
"We are confident that Taiwanese democracy will be more mature. As a result, we are not afraid of pursuing exchanges with China but support broadening the scope of cross-strait exchanges because doing so will be advantageous to not only the Taiwanese economy but also China's democratic development," he said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized Ma's proposed cross-strait policies, saying that he had failed to provide any assessment of the feasibility of his ideas.
"It shows it [Ma's cross-strait platform] is simply a campaign tool and he could not ensure his ideas would be implemented," the MAC said in a statement released later yesterday.
If Ma signs a peace agreement or negotiates with China based on the so-called "1992 consensus," it would be very likely be framed according to Beijing's "one China principle," unless Ma asked Beijing to clearly state that the "1992 consensus" has nothing to do with the "one China" principle, the MAC statement said.
"It would be degrading and would seriously damage the rights and interests of the 23 million people of Taiwan," the statement added.
Additional reporting by Jewel Huang
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