China yesterday warned Taiwan not to allow exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to visit, after New Power Party Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) issued an invitation.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has not said whether the government would allow a visit by the Dalai Lama, who congratulated Tsai on her “remarkable” victory in the Jan. 16 election.
Lim, an outspoken critic of Beijing, invited the Dalai Lama when he met him in India last week.
Photo: AFP
Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光), spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, told a regular news briefing in Beijing that the Dalai Lama “wears religious clothes to carry out separatist activities.”
“The intention of some forces in Taiwan to collude with separatists seeking ‘Tibet independence’ and to create disturbances will have a severe impact on relations across the Taiwan Strait,” Ma said. “We firmly oppose any form of visit.”
Lim’s assistant, Kenny Chang (張庭瑜), said that the Dalai Lama is highly respected in Taiwan and that Lim invited him “to share his ideas and religious philosophy.”
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
On Tuesday, Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee (李大維) told lawmakers that if the Dalai Lama decided to come, the ministry would review the matter carefully, Chinese-language media reported.
A ministry spokeswoman told reporters: “If he submits his [visa] application, the government will handle it based on relevant rules.”
Tenzin Taklha, an aide to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, declined to comment yesterday when reached by telephone.
The Dalai Lama is currently on a visit to Europe. Yesterday he met with a group of French lawmakers at the Senate in Paris.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) refused the Dalai Lama entry several times after his last visit to Taiwan in 2009.
In 2008, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) criticized Ma’s administration for refusing to grant the Dalai Lama entry.
According to the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), at the time Tsai characterized the Dalai Lama as “a friend of Taiwan” who was denied entry because Ma Ying-jeou was “afraid of China.”
She was quoted as saying that the nation should not be intimidated by China and that as DPP chairperson, she would be “steadfast in defending” this position.
Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) yesterday said that the office “would not comment on a hypothetical case.”
DPP spokesman Yang Chia-liang (楊家俍) last night said the DPP has long been concerned with religious freedom in China.
The government has rules it must follow in issuing visas and the DPP respects that, he said.
DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬), approached as he was leaving a Central Standing Committee meeting at the DPP’s headquarters in Taipei, said that he hoped the government would “tough it out” to welcome the Dalai Lama.
“From the perspective of the freedom of speech and asserting Taiwan’s sovereign independence, we have no cause to follow the example of the Ma [Ying-jeou] administration in refusing the Dalai Lama’s visit,” Gao said.
Additional reporting by Su Fang-ho
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS