Both sides of the Taiwan Strait should create a “positive environment” for resolving political differences and adopt a “first the easy, then the difficult” approach to furthering bilateral ties, a visiting Chinese official told a forum in Taipei yesterday.
“Without proper management or being partially dealt with, the political differences [between the two sides] will hamper the development of cross-strait relations,” said Sun Yafu (孫亞夫), deputy director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO).
The forum was organized by the Taipei Forum Foundation, a Taiwan-based think tank, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of a bilateral negotiation held in Singapore between April 27 and April 29, 1993 — the first official contact between the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
Photo: CNA
The unprecedented negotiations, also known as the “Koo-Wang talks,” saw then Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) and his Chinese counterpart, then Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) chairman Wang Daohan (汪道涵), sign four agreements.
Sun, who also serves as ARATS vice president, said that while Beijing has “confidence and patience” in the peaceful development of cross-strait engagement, it believes that such ties should make progress on every front, including the political one.
He said he supported a proposal to establish a cross-strait think tank or forum to discuss and contemplate “sensitive topics” that could not yet be negotiated by the Taiwanese and Chinese governments.
Sun praised the meeting as a “milestone,” but it seemed that every speaker at the forum was aware that the next phase of bilateral engagement and China’s intention to facilitate political talks with Taiwan would be the most important issues.
Former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄) and former premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said that the time was not ripe for the two sides to begin political negotiations due to the lack of consensus on the issue in Taiwan, with Liu saying that Beijing’s insistence on the “one China” framework had also contributed to the stalemate.
Former SEF chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) urged President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to seek a bilateral peace agreement and a pact on military confidence-building measures with China before then end of his term, and called for granting Chinese television stations broadcasting licenses in Taiwan.
“To counteract the much-criticized media chaos in Taiwan, we can bring in TV stations like China Central Television and Phoenix Television, which present much better coverage of international news,” Chiang said.
The proposal reflected the urgency for Taiwan to build up its confidence — economically and culturally — against a rising China, Chiang said, adding that Taiwan also has to be determined in carrying out trade liberalization and regional economic integration.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS