China's proposed anti-secession bill amounts to a more serious potential source of cross-strait tension than the previously touted unification law, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.
"We are the Republic of China and they are the People's Republic of China. This has been the reality for 55 years now. The [anti-secession bill's] precondition that the two be a unified entity would effectively mean they can enact legislation to penalize any sort of deviation from what they define the status quo to be," MAC Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday during an interview with TVBS.
"Who would be defining reality? China. Who would be enacting this legislation? China. Who would judge whether the law had been trespassed? China. Who doles out penalties? China. So who is unilaterally changing the status quo?" Wu asked.
Wu said the international community needed to understand that the anti-secession bill was a serious provocation and one that Taiwan could not tolerate.
His warning comes after the council admitted last week that the US had relayed Chinese government plans to consider a draft anti-secession law during the National People's Congress, which will be held from this Saturday to the following Wednesday. Taiwanese officials and political observers were previously expecting China to enact a unification law.
According to the council's legal affairs director, Jeff Yang (
"[Wu] said during the meeting that he felt the unification law accepted the state of separation [across the Taiwan Strait] as read. The anti-secession law, however, will assume a state of unification," Yang said.
Yang added that Wu had warned that it would be therefore appropriate to take a cautious position in determining whether the anti-secession law in fact represented a softening of the Chinese stance, as some believed.
The anti-secession bill might not be all bad news for cross-strait ties, however. An official who spoke on condition of anonymity pointed to the possibility of a two-pronged strategy on China's part. He said that even while China was targeting Taiwan with the law, it was unlikely that the wording of the law would include Taiwan.
The legislation would be geared towards satisfying domestic pressure in taking a hard line with Taiwan, he said.
"It is possible that with the anti-secession law in place, China would have more room to pursue non-political matters, such as Lunar New Year charter flights," the official told the Taipei Times, saying that there was a still a chance that the flights might be arranged in time.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS