Activists yesterday welcomed proposals to transfer the review of supervisory articles governing negotiations with China to a joint legislative committee, calling for amendments and hastening the review process.
“This is an important bill which does not just address internal administrative questions,” said Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強), who was part of the Sunflower movement, at a rally outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei with Social Democratic Party (SDP) activists. “Allowing legislators from all related committees to be included in discussions and to propose substantial amendments is the right direction.”
Passage of supervisory articles was a key demand of the Sunflower movement, which saw student activists occupy the legislature in 2014 to protest an agreement negotiated by the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Legislators yesterday clashed over whether review of the supervisory articles should be conducted by the Internal Administration Committee or a special joint legislative committee, allowing lawmakers from the New Power Party (NPP) — which is not represented on the Internal Administration Committee — to vote and directly propose amendments during the review process.
NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) was a prominent Sunflower movement activist, and the party has promised to propose Economic Democracy Union-sponsored amendments to the draft bill.
Lai added that a joint committee review should not be an excuse to delay a committee review.
“What we do not want is for an agreement for a joint committee review, only to see the bill drop out of sight, like a stone sinking to the bottom of the sea,” he said, reiterating activists’ concerns that cross-strait talks are likely to resume next year following the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th National Party Congress this fall.
Lai also called for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to explain how the proposed supervisory articles would affect previously negotiated agreements on trade in services and goods.
Whether the government would be required to submit negotiation plans for a trade in goods agreement after the bill’s passage remains unclear, he said.
It is also unclear whether there will be an article-by-article or package vote on the service trade agreement, he said.
SDP Chairperson Fan Yun (范雲) called for changes to the DPP caucus’ draft bill that would require a substantive review of agreements, automatic referendums on the results of political talks, to redefine “cross-strait relations” as being between “Taiwan and China,” as well as applying any new review requirements to the proposed service trade agreement.
She said that the DPP seemed to have a “goldfish brain” — lacking long-term memory — over the service trade agreement, which served as the catalyst for the Sunflower movement.
“Given that the official draft does not include provisions that would ensure it is retroactively applied to the service trade agreement, how does [the DPP] intend to address the issue? So far it has failed to give us a clear answer,” she said.
The US Department of State yesterday criticized Beijing over its misrepresentation of the US’ “one China” policy in the latest diplomatic salvo between the two countries over a bid by Taiwan to regain its observer status at the World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy,” Department of State spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter. “The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s ‘one China principle’ — we remain committed to our longstanding, bipartisan one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, Three Joint Communiques, and
FATES LINKED: The US president said that sanctions on Russia over Ukraine must exact a ‘long-term price,’ because otherwise ‘what signal does that send to China?’ US President Joe Biden yesterday vowed that US forces would defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack in his strongest statement to date on the issue. Beijing is already “flirting with danger,” Biden said following talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, in which the pair agreed to monitor Chinese naval activity and joint Chinese-Russian exercises. Asked if Washington was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, he replied: “Yes.” “That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said. “We agreed with the ‘one China’ policy, we signed on to it ... but the idea that it can be
INFORMATION LEAKED: Documents from Xinjiang purportedly showed top leaders in Beijing calling for a forceful crackdown and even orders to shoot to kill Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday held a videoconference with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet as she visited Xinjiang during a mission overshadowed by fresh allegations of Uighur abuses and fears she is being used as a public relations tool. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been accused of detaining more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region as part of a years-long crackdown the US and lawmakers in other Western nations have labeled a “genocide.” China denies the allegations. Bachelet was expected to visit the cities of Urumqi and Kashgar on a six-day tour. The US
SUBTLE? While Biden said the US policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan had not changed, the group targeted China and Russia without naming them Leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US yesterday warned against attempts to “change the status quo by force,” as concerns grow about whether China could invade Taiwan. The issue of Taiwan loomed over a leadership meeting in Tokyo of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) nations — the US, Japan, Australia and India — who stressed their determination to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China, although Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the group was not targeting any one country. The four leaders said in a joint statement issued after their talks
RSS