President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) used a videoconference with US academics to praise the recent fishery agreement with Japan as a successful application of his East China Sea peace initiative, adding that the government would seek cooperation with China on the joint development of natural resources in the area, while shelving territorial disputes over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台).
Taiwan and Japan signed a fisheries agreement last week in a bid to end controversies over fishing in waters surrounding the Diaoyutais, known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan.
In a videoconference with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University in California, Ma said the pact did not address the competing claims over the Diaoyutais because the two sides agreed to set aside territorial disputes during the negotiations.
In response to a question from former US chief of naval operations Gary Roughead about the Diaoyutais situation now, Ma said that since Japan has an agreement with China on resource development in the East China Sea, Taiwan would seek to negotiate with Japan on future talks with China on joint development of natural resources in the area because the two have already been cooperating on sea rescues and oil development in the Taiwan Strait.
“I have always believed that while national sovereignty cannot be divided, natural resources can be shared. If we focus first on natural resources, joint development and joint conservation and management, I think we can develop the kind of mutual trust that may eventually lead us to solutions for sovereignty issues,” he said.
During the one-hour videoconference chaired by former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Ma said the government would seek to deepen cross-strait relations and reduce tensions across the Strait in a speech entitled “Steering Through a Sea of Change.”
The government would continue to focus on economic and other less sensitive cross-strait issues, while putting aside political disputes over sovereignty, he said. The two sides of the Strait would continue to complete negotiations on trade in goods and services under the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, and expand educational and cultural exchanges, including relaxing restrictions on the number of Chinese students in Taiwan, he said.
In response to Rice’s question about the impact of closer cross-strait ties on Taiwan-US relations, Ma said reducing tensions across the Strait should serve the best interests of the US and the international community, and Taipei would continue to seek closer economic cooperation with the US.
Seperately, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said Ma’s insistence on making China a player in the Diaoyutais dispute between Taiwan and Japan, and his plan to sign a pact with China on sharing resources in the East China Sea, were unnecessary and did not serve Taiwan’s interests.
History has shown that “Ma had only China in his eyes on almost every issue related to international cooperation, such as fighting crime, medical cooperation and economic cooperation,” DPP Policy Research Committee executive director Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said.
“Collaborating with China without strengthening collaborative partnerships with other countries and allies would further trap Taiwan in Beijing’s ‘one China’ framework, which does not serve Taiwan’s interests,” Wu said.
Wu questioned the motives behind Ma’s two-phase approach to resolving the Diaoyutais dispute — bilateral talks between Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan and China, and China and Japan first, and trilateral talks second — saying that dragging China into a Taiwan-Japan dispute would not benefit Taiwan.
The DPP supports joint resource development in the region, but it does not support a bilateral cooperation strategy with China, Wu said.
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