Chen shrugs off communique snub

At a press conference held at the legislature, KMT caucus whip Hsu Shao-ping (徐少萍) said the president's foreign aid pledge had dampened Taiwanese willingness to pay tax.

Citing a survey conducted by the Chinese-language Apple Daily among 607 people on Thursday, Hsu said about 78.93 percent of the respondents said they were opposed to the government's plan to subsidize Taiwan's allies.

"The results showed that people are very resentful of checkbook diplomacy," Hsu said.

KMT Legislator Lee Ching-an (李慶安), who was also at the conference, lashed out at the president, saying that he was trying to "cover up the disorder of domestic affairs and the economy by focusing on diplomacy."

Meanwhile, the DPP caucus threw its support behind the president, saying that the foreign aid was a reciprocal investment in Honduras.

"Checkbook diplomacy only existed when the KMT was in power," DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-chin (葉宜津) said at a separate press conference.

"After the DPP came to power, it realized that it is impossible to make real friends by giving out money and that we can never compete with China in the checkbook diplomacy stakes," she said.

"The public should not think of our diplomatic efforts as checkbook diplomacy," Yeh said.