Taiwan vowed yesterday to take whatever action necessary to defend its official title in an Asian medical student group.
Lin Wen-tong (林文通), director of the Ministry of Education’s Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations, said that Taiwan would not oppose the Asian Medical Students Association (AMSA) accepting China as a member, but said that a proposal by Beijing to change Taiwan’s title from “AMSA-Taiwan” to “AMSA-Taiwan, China” was totally unacceptable.
The name-change proposal is to be voted on in a Feb. 27 AMSA members’ meeting.
AMSA, a non-governmental organization founded by Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia in 1985, now has 20 members.
AMSA-Taiwan said it launched a campaign last week to solicit the support of other AMSA members to safeguard Taiwan’s name.
“AMSA-Taiwan is excited about the potential of our Chinese medical student friends to join AMSA, and to play a more active role in this international medical students’ platform, as we believe friendship and medicine should be beyond borders,” a statement in English released by AMSA-Taiwan read. “However, we are regretful to learn that AMSA-China has brought political interference into AMSA, a non-political students’ organization. We consider such unnecessary political interference to be detrimental to the progress and development of AMSA.”
As of press time yesterday, the on-line signature drive has garnered more than 1,100 signatures from students in Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and the US.
AMSA-Taiwan chairperson Chen Ying-chi (陳映綺), a student at Chung Shan Medical University’s School of Medicine, slammed China’s proposal as unreasonable.
“It’s an undeniable fact that Taiwan is a founding member of AMSA. To change AMSA-Taiwan’s name undoubtedly runs counter to the AMSA’s history,” she said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said “the incident again proves that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) modus vivendi diplomatic truce with China is naive.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS