Taiwan Vice President Annette Lu (
"It's certainly not our fault at all to create the tension in the Strait. On the contrary, it's all the fault of Chinese leaders who continue to isolate Taiwan internationally, who continue to humiliate leaders of Taiwan and continue to increase military threats over Taiwan," she said.
She urged world leaders to "do something to prevent China from taking any irrational act against Taiwan" during an interview with BBC broadcast Saturday.
"In fact, there is a war going on, psychologically, economically and politically. However, no one would be happy, no one would be benefit by having a war launched by either side," she said.
Lu said Taipei would never create any trouble in the Taiwan Strait however "one has every reason to suspect, to worry that they are (Beijing) going to launch a certain kind of threat to create instability in this area."
She said the world should pay attention to cross-Strait issues because a confrontation in the Taiwan Strait could affect regional and even global stability.
Lu told the BBC planned constitutional reforms by President Chen Shui-bian (
"We have been independent for decades; there's no need for us to make a formal declaration at all; just like persons; there's no need to declare 'I am a person'; that's a fact."
China, which views Taiwan as part its territory awaiting reunification, has repeatedly threatened to invade should the island declare formal independence.
The two sides split in 1949 at the end of a civil war.
Beijing strongly opposes to the island's attempts to join the United Nations or other world bodies as a move toward seeking statehood. Taipei's latest bid to gain a UN seat, which will be debated at the UN General Assembly on September 15, is not expected to be approved.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods