Taiwanese and Chinese officials yesterday held the first direct and the highest-level talks since 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) fled to Taiwan following its defeat by the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War.
The historic meeting between Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) and his counterpart, Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), in the Chinese city of Nanjing, which agreed to establish a communication channel for future engagement, marked the first time in 65 years that government ministers from across the Taiwan Strait had held talks in their official capacities, despite more than a dozen agreements having been signed during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) two terms in office.
Wang, who led a 20-member delegation on a four-day visit to China, told a press conference after a three-hour closed-door meeting at the Purple Palace Nanjing Hotel that his ministry and the TAO had agreed to establish a direct and regular communication platform and reached a consensus in principle on several issues.
Photo: AFP
The communication channel would go hand-in-hand with the current semi-governmental mechanism between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association of Relations Across the Straits (ARATS), as they are complementary rather than adversarial, Wang said.
The issue of a potential meeting between Ma and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at an APEC summit in Beijing later this year, which has drawn suspicion from the opposition parties in Taiwan, was not raised at the meeting, nor was the sensitive topic of China’s demarcation of an East China Sea air defense identification zone, Wang said.
The minister said that he had “no regrets” about not discussing the potential Ma-Xi meeting because “it was not on the agenda in the first place.”
Photo: CNA
The Legislative Yuan had put Wang on a tight leash by passing a resolution prohibiting the minister from signing any written document during his visit.
The first highlight of the meeting came before the talks started as hundreds of reporters tried to anticipate how the officials would address each other, a barometer for a breakthrough in bilateral relations.
Wang referred to Zhang as “TAO Minister Zhang Zhijun,” while Zhang simply addressed Wang as “Minister Wang Yu-chi,” leaving out the name of Wang’s ministry, before the two shook hands and made their opening statements.
However, China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency referred to Wang as the “responsible official of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council” in its Chinese-language reports and as “Taiwan’s mainland affairs chief” in its English-language coverage.
Both officials reiterated in their statements that the so-called “1992 consensus” serves as the foundation of bilateral engagement, which would be strengthened under the current framework in the future.
“It’s not been easy for us to be sitting at the same table today,” Wang said.
At the meeting, they agreed to seek a solution on health insurance coverage for Taiwanese students studying in China, pragmatically plan for the establishments of SEF and ARATS offices in each other’s territory and study the feasibility of allowing humanitarian visits to detained nationals once the offices have been established.
Taiwan raised the issue of reciprocal exchange of news information, but did not protest China’s refusal to issue visas to two Taiwanese reporters who wished to travel to cover the visit.
Wang also brought up Taiwan’s hope for parallel progress between economic integration with China and the rest of the world, without receiving a positive response from the Chinese side.
In his opening statement, Zhang said cross-strait relations “cannot afford to suffer from another decline” after they have dramatically improved since May 2008 — when Ma took office.
A Xinhua report said the meeting has reached “positive consensus” on many fronts, including an insistence on the “1992 consensus,” opposition to independence for Taiwan and strengthening exchanges.
The report urged follow-up agreements under the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) and to study the feasibility of bilateral cooperation on regional economic integration.
Zhang also accepted Wang’s invitation for a return visit, it said.
Wang is scheduled to visit the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum today, before delivering a speech at Nanjing University on youth exchanges across the Taiwan Strait.
He is due to attend a forum and hold talks with Chinese think tanks tomorrow, before wrapping up the trip and returning to Taipei on Friday.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique