Beijing’s behavior was “out of control,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday after a Taiwanese-Spanish academic said that China’s embassy in Spain pressured the University of Salamanca to cancel a Taiwanese culture event.
“Today I decided to go public with the email #China’s embassy in Spain sent to coerce the University of #Salamanca into cancelling “#Taiwan Cultural Days” on October 2017,” Shiany Perez-Cheng (鄭夏霓) tweeted late on Saturday.
Perez-Chen is a professor of international relations at the university and a leading organizer of the university’s Taiwan Culture Day.
Photo from Shiany Perez-Cheng’s Twitter account
A letter attached to the tweet that Perez-Chen said was an English-language version of the embassy’s e-mail said: “Inviting to [sic] the so-called ‘Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan’ to lecture causes confusion and misunderstanding about the Taiwan problem.”
“There are many incorrect expressions in the cultural days’ program and in the promotional materials,” it said. “Those arguments do not fall in line with the Spanish government, who has long followed the ‘one China principle.’”
“We wouldn’t like your institution to be used by Taiwanese authorities as a platform for its political agenda, it would affect the university’s good relations with China,” it said.
The letter demanded that the university accept the “one China” principle and take measures to “avoid and eliminate the adverse effects.”
The defilement of a storied European university is the latest instance of China’s continued persecution of Taiwan, the ministry said in a statement.
Beijing’s hinderance of Taiwanese participation in free academic and cultural exchanges is “barbaric,” the ministry said, adding that the government was dismayed and angered.
Beijing’s all-out effort to squeeze Taiwan’s international space, instead of achieving “the union of souls across the [Taiwan] Strait” touted by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in March, would serve only to invite the “anger and even scorn for China of the Taiwanese,” the ministry said.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS