The Chinese government plans to team up with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to force President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to push Taiwan closer to unification with China, a top Chinese official has said.
In this month’s edition of the Chinese-language Hong Kong publication Xinbao Caijing Monthly, Ye Guohua (葉國華), honorary chairman of the board of the foreign affairs think tank China Foundation for International Studies and Academic Exchanges, said China wants to force Ma to adhere to the five point statement issued by former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in 2005. This would then set the framework for unification talks.
Ye said Beijing looks at the talks between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) merely as “holding hands” and does not think the “small three links” represent true direct transportation.
Ye said China will not enter into a compromise that easily and that “China will force Ma into implementing the KMT line,” adding that if this cannot be done, China may not be as lenient toward Ma.
He said that to accomplish its goal, China will strengthen the KMT’s position and increase party to party talks to help the KMT control Ma and make him adhere to the Lien-Hu statement. Whether or not the ARATS chairman meets with Ma during his visit to Taiwan later this year would be a good indicator of China’s view of the situation.
Ye also said the fact that former deputy minister of foreign affairs Wang Yi (王毅) was appointed chairman of the Taiwan Affairs Office shows that the Taiwan issue has been internationalized. He said the two key factors in the issue were public opinion and economic interaction across the Strait and that even Ma did not know whether Taiwan in the end would move toward unification or declare independence.
The greatest interference, Ye said, comes from the US and Japan, with the US’ national interest paramount, and it could no longer be treated as a cross-strait issue.
Commenting on Ma’s statement that he would not live to see unification, Ye — who has private contacts with Ma — said this was probably made as a show for the US and Japan, but that it also indicated that Ma lacks direction and the pull the US has over the situation.
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