Speaking on the eve of the party's first official delegation to visit China since 1949, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) said yesterday that the mission of the KMT is provide the people with alternatives in the face of worsening cross-strait tensions.
"As the nation's largest opposition party, it is the duty of the KMT to create alternate choices and visions for the people," Lien said. "We cannot stay silent and inactive when we see that a situation where a helpless administration sends us on a collision course [with China]."
"The KMT does not support Taiwanese independence, but we do not believe that China should react with military action ... both sides of the strait should increase their efforts to open dialogue and seek mutual benefits," Lien added.
Lien made the remarks yesterday morning to the 35-member delegation at the KMT headquarters.
The delegation is set to leave for China today.
The group, which is headed by KMT Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kun (江丙坤), will spend five days in China. It will first go to the Mausoleum of the 72 Martyrs in Guangzhou on March 28 and then fly to Nanjing on March 29 to pay the party's respects to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing. The last two days of the trip will be spent in Beijing visiting the Sun Yat-sen monument in Xiangshan.
The trip, which was first made public by Lien Feb. 28, is being planned ostensibly to allow the KMT to commemorate the memory of its founder, Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) -- also founding father of the Republic of China -- on the 80th anniversary of Sun's death.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Chiang said that the delegation would be meeting with the Taiwanese businesspeople living in China, and, if given the chance, Chinese government officials.
However, he refused to discuss which government officials the delegation would be meeting.
Chiang also said that besides helping his party pay its respects to its founder, the trip also has economic goals.
While in China, said Chiang, he hopes to talk with Chinese officials about establishing three direct transportation links across the Taiwan Strait and about direct cargo charter flights.
Besides Chiang, the members of the delegation include office director Ting Yuan-chao (丁遠超), KMT spokesman Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭), KMT Secretary-General Huang Fu-tien (黃福田), party policy executive director Cheng Feng-shih (鄭逢時), culture and communications head Lai Su-chu (賴素如), and legislators Wu Sung-pi (吳松柏), Chao Erh-chung (曹爾忠), Yang Chung-ying (楊瓊櫻) and Chu Feng-chih (朱鳳芝).
Given that Chang, the KMT's former mainland affairs division head and current spokesman Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭), are also part of the delegation, local Chinese-language media speculated yesterday that the trip will pave the way for a trip by Lien to China in June.
When asked about the prospect, party officials, however, refused to comment.
‘UNAFRAID’: Most Taiwanese do not seem to be aware of the danger of war and might be unprepared, a KMT legislator said of the poll by an affiliated foundation Nearly 60 percent of Taiwanese believe that a war between Taiwan and China is “unlikely” or “impossible,” a survey released yesterday by the National Policy Foundation showed. The survey asked participants if they thought there was a possibility of war between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait based on recent developments, said the foundation, which is affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). While 42.5 percent of respondents thought it was “unlikely” and 17.1 percent believed it was “impossible,” 5.1 percent said it was “very likely” and 17.2 percent said it was “fairly possible,” the survey showed. Another 18.2 percent gave
The Kaohsiung Prosecutors’ Office on Monday indicted a Chinese sea captain over his alleged involvement in the killing of four pirates at sea in 2012, while serving as the captain of a Taiwanese fishing vessel. The suspect, identified by the media as 43-year-old Wang Fengyu (汪峰裕), was charged with homicide and breaches of the Controlling Guns, Ammunition and Knives Act (槍砲彈藥刀械管制條例), the indictment read. Wang asked two Pakistani mercenaries that he hired as acting captain of the Kaohsiung-registered Ping Shin No. 101 to fire on and kill four suspected Somalian pirates in the Indian Ocean off the Somalian coast on Sept. 29,
UPGRADE: The system is more efficient than others, which typically involve longer procedures that can produce pseudo-positive or pseudo-negative results The National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center yesterday unveiled an infrared wax physisorption kinetics imaging system, which it said efficiently detects 10 types of cancer. Through scanning tissue section samples, the imaging system can detect colon, breast, stomach, oral, ovarian, cervical, prostate and skin cancer, as well as neuroendocrine tumors and glioblastoma, center associate research fellow Lee Yao-chang (李耀昌) told a news conference in Taipei. The system uses paraffin and beeswax with organic solutions as developers for its infrared imaging device, which can mark abnormal polysaccharides on the surface of cancer cells in six to 15 minutes, while the wax is absorbed by
China is trying to convince Taiwanese that an authoritarian system is preferable to democracy, the Information Operations Research Group (IORG) said at a conference yesterday. China has been employing Taiwanese sympathetic to its “united front” tactics to help spread disinformation about democracy and Taiwanese society through social media, television programs, YouTube and by other means, the group said at the conference to promote public awareness of China’s cognitive warfare campaign. In the group’s latest report, it highlighted eight disinformation discussions that its researchers listed under three main topics: flu viruses in the US are deadlier than COVID-19; US troop movements caused the
RSS