The new Taiwan-Hong Kong air accord is a compromise between Taiwan and Beijing that has produced a possible model for future cross-strait talks, analysts said yesterday.
Hsieh Fu-yuan (
The talks had become bogged down in the opposing viewpoints of Beijing and Taipei.
China wanted to regard the aviation talks as an "internal affair of the state" because it regards Taiwan as part of its territory. Taiwan, wanting to ensure its independent sovereignty, insisted the talks be conducted on a government-to-government basis.
Despite the differences, the Taiwan-Hong Kong route is important to both sides and there was pressure on both sides to reach a deal.
According to Jan Jyh-horng (
However, Jan said, "Taiwan added a representative from the private sector because Hong Kong asked it to do so."
Nevertheless, during the four rounds of negotiations, "The representative from the private sector was not allowed to offer opinions unless officials told him to do so," a high-ranking official from the MAC said.
Since Beijing did not oppose the composition of Taiwan's delegation, many officials from the MAC agreed that the "Taiwan-Hong Kong air-pact negotiations model" left room for both Taiwan and Beijing to interpret the matter in their own ways.
"Now China can say the talks were an internal affair of a state, while Taiwan can claim they're government-to-government talks," Hsieh said. "The compromise made signing the new pact possible."
Not only did Taiwan and Beijing compromise on the composition of the delegations, but they both had to give ground on the format of the agreements.
An MAC official who wished to stay anonymous said that Taiwan had originally wanted to follow the regular format of international flight agreements, "but the Hong Kong side opposed the idea and wanted a commercial agreement instead."
The final agreement thus differed slightly from the regular international format but kept international flight regulations in the agreements.
"We put international regulations into the agreements, such as regulations on customs, flight examination procedures ? it could not be a domestic flight agreement as China said," the official said.
Taiwan could also claim success over the name of the agreement.
The original pact, signed in 1996, was "the commercial agreement among four airline companies." The new agreement, however, is "the air transportation agreement between Taiwan and Hong Kong."
"The flexibility that both sides have is a key factor that made the new pact possible," Hsieh said. But he also warned that in the future, if Beijing is not willing to compromise, "it will be a serious obstacle for Taiwan."
MAC Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said after the agreement was reached on Saturday that the negotiation model for the Taiwan-Hong Kong air pact may be a reference for future cross-strait talks, especially regarding direct links.
She added, however, "Each negotiation is different. You have to consider every factor involved in the matter. Anything is possible as long as Taiwan and Beijing sit down to talk."
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,