The Legislative Yuan yesterday issued a joint statement on the South China Sea ruling, rejecting “any arbitrary decision made by international arbitration” concerning the Republic of China’s (ROC) rights over “the South China Sea islands and their relevant waters.”
Amid inter-party struggles in the legislature over the bill dealing with ill-gotten party assets, the four party caucuses reached consensus over the nation’s stance toward the ruling on Tuesday by the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
A statement announced by Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) at 5pm yesterday said that the arbitration ruling has “seriously damaged the rights of the nation to its territory and the regional peace of the South China Sea.”
Photo: CNA
“The legislature, the ROC’s highest representative institution and authorized by the nation’s citizens, has made a resolution to make an international statement on the basis of facts and jurisprudence,” it said.
“The ROC enjoys the rights conferred by international law over its South China Sea islands and its relevant waters as they are, in terms of history, geography and international law, part of the ROC’s territory and waters. Any country’s claims or occupation or any international arbitration’s arbitrary decision will not be recognized by the ROC,” the statement said.
“The ROC has been substantively occupying and effectively governing Taiping Island [太平島, Itu Aba Island] of the South China Sea islands for more than half a century without interruption. Former presidents Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) both visited the island, which has infrastructure for daily living and administration and military construction, in 2008 and this year respectively and confirmed the nation’s occupation and sovereignty, which is not to be challenged by any country or arbitration,” it said.
The third point of the statement said that the ROC government has undertaken and will continue to undertake “both outward-facing and inward-facing sovereignty protecting actions regarding the South China Sea islands including Taiping.”
The “outward-facing” part will be continuing its campaign to show the international community and related organizations evidence affirming the nation’s rights and claims over the islands and their relevant waters; the “inward-facing” action will be continuing the building on Itu Aba, including bolstering the forces and military equipment stationed there, promoting academic research and tourism, and reinforcing the basic infrastructures for transportation, communications and environmental protection.
“Taiping Island is a natural island, not a rock. The arbitration tribunal’s judgement is obviously at odds with facts. And that the award refers to the nation as ‘Taiwan Authority of China’ has belittled the nation’s status as a sovereign nation and is unacceptable to the ROC government and its people,” the statement said.
The resolution to make the statement, the cross-caucus negotiation for which was initiated by the People First Party (PFP) caucus, was endorsed by all caucuses, the Democratic Progressive Party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the New Power Party and the PFP.
There was no mention of the “U-shaped line” or the “11-dash line” claims in the statement.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS