A former Japanese foreign ministry official who quit last month after his government prevented him from visiting Taiwan said yesterday his country should establish official ties with Taiwan.
"Judging from the close cultural, economic and trade interactions between these two nations, it is unnatural and unreasonable for Japan's foreign policy to neglect Taiwan's existence," Kenichi Mizuno (水野賢一), a member of the Japanese Diet, said at a seminar on Taiwan-Japan relations.
The seminar was hosted by Taiwan's Taiwan-Japan Forum in the 21st Century (21
Mizuno, of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said that while formal China-Japan relations were important to Japan, such relations should not be built at Taiwan's expense.
"I personally think that Japan should seriously consider establishing formal ties with Taiwan, for both countries shares common values in democracy and freedom, values that China lacks," he said.
Conceding that such a proposition would be strongly opposed by China, Mizuno said that Japan should stand firm and not yield to pressure from Beijing.
"Japan should not fear raising tensions between Japan and China and curtail its decisions based on presumptions about China's reaction," he said.
Mizuno recently stirred an uproar in Japan when he resigned late last month as parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a post he had held since January, to protest Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi's rejection of his request to pay an official visit to Taiwan.
No high-level foreign ministry official or even parliamentary secretary has paid an official visit to Taiwan since 1972, when Japan and Taiwan ended official diplomatic ties.
Other than cultural and trade exchanges, frequent interaction should also be promoted between Japanese and Taiwanese government officials, for Taiwan is an important partner of Japan, a reality that cannot be denied, Mizuno said.
DPP legislative whip Wang Tuoh (
The possibility of Taiwan signing a free-trade agreement with Japan was also discussed at the seminar yesterday.
While the DPP late last month vowed to push for such an agreement within two years, Japanese Diet member Isao Matsumiya, however, said that it would be difficult to stick to the timetable as a consensus had not been reached between the two countries.
Matsumiya also said Japan was waiting to see how China's overtures to ASEAN developed before exploring a free-trade deal with Taiwan.
Aside from Mizuno and Matsumiya, Diet member Shoichi Nakagawa also took part in the seminar as well as several Taiwanese legislators, including Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) of the DPP, Chen Horng-chi (陳鴻基) and Shyu Jong-shyong (徐中雄) of the KMT and Wu Tung-sheng (吳東昇) of the TSU.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do