Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said yesterday that Taiwan would no longer apply to participate in the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) because the nation is not being treated with dignity and equality.
“The matter will be left for the new administration to decide,” Chang said in a telephone interview with reporters, referring to the administration of president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), which is to take office on May 20.
Chang said the ministry sent a letter to the Interim Secretariat for Establishing the AIIB in March last year expressing Taiwan’s wish to become a founding member of the bank, but the bid was rejected.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) later said several times that China welcomed Taiwan’s participation in the AIIB under an appropriate name, but he never specified what Beijing considered “appropriate.”
After the AIIB was formally inaugurated in January, Chang sent a congratulatory message to AIIB president Jin Liqun (金立群) and asked whether Taiwan needed to apply again, but he received no response.
Since Tsai was elected on Jan. 16, Jin has repeatedly described Taiwan’s AIIB bid as a “family matter” and has insisted that Taiwan is not a sovereign state, so should follow the Hong Kong model and ask the Chinese Ministry of Finance to apply for Taiwan’s membership on its behalf in accordance with the AIIB charter.
“We cannot accept such a model,” Chang said, adding that the ministry would no longer apply for membership because Taiwan cannot join the AIIB under conditions of dignity and equality.
However, this does not mean the “end of the AIIB bid,” which hinges on the attitude of China going forward, he said.
Asked if Jin’s attitude was related to the Democratic Progressive Party winning power in Taiwan, Chang did not comment, but he stressed that Taiwan would not accept participation in the AIIB based on the Hong Kong model.
A Ministry of Finance official yesterday said that Taiwan’s bottom line is to join the AIIB under the name “Chinese Taipei” — under the terms of a bipartisan agreement reached last year — and Jin’s demand that the nation musty apply through the Chinese Ministry of Finance had hurt Taiwan’s dignity.
However, the official also said that if China was willing to let Taiwan apply to join in its capacity as an Asian Development Bank member, then it would be able to discuss the possibility of joining the bank.
“The designation is important. We cannot be denigrated,” the official said.
Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究) president Wu Chung-shu (吳中書) said AIIB membership is intended to expand investment channels for local firms, but must not be used to downgrade the nation’s sovereignty.
There is still room for cooperation if the two sides can work out differences over AIIB accession requirements, Wu said.
Richard Watanabe (吳偉臺), financial service leader at PricewaterhoueCoopers Taiwan, said AIIB membership has little bearing on Taiwan, as local firms are not ready for international construction projects.
Additional reporting by Crystal Hsu
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS