Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday the government will deal with high-level Chinese officials' requests to visit Taiwan based on the principles of equality, reciprocity and negotiations by working level officials.
Wu made the remarks after President Chen Shui-bian (
The president said Taiwan would give the green light for Chen Yunlin's visit only if Beijing allowed Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to attend next month's APEC meeting in Busan, South Korea, or if it let Wu visit China.
PHOTO: YANG PEI-HUA, TAIPEI TIMES
He made the remarks on Saturday night while campaigning for Chen Chien-ming (
"If Wang is not allowed to attend the APEC summit, [China] don't even think that Chen Yunlin (
"[Or] if China lets Wu visit pro-democracy activists in China, Taiwan will acquiesce in approving Chen's visit," the president said.
Chen said that the first option followed the precedent set by China, which has opposed the president's decision to select Wang to act as his envoy to the APEC summit.
The second alternative was based on the principle of equality and reciprocity, he said.
Chen's decision to name Wang as his proxy to the summit won the backing of politicians from across party lines, but Seoul rejected Wang as a result of China's opposition.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon has urged the government to send another candidate with a background in economics.
"If lacking a background in economic affairs is a defensible reason to reject Wang's attendance at APEC, why should Taiwan say yes to Chen Yunlin's request?" the president said.
The president said that Chen Yunlin, who was invited by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to attend a party-to-party forum on business, is also not a person with a background in economics.
According to a Central News Agency report last Thursday, the KMT filed an application with the government for Chen Yunlin and other high-level officials in China's Taiwan Affairs Office to visit Taiwan in December.
Referring to the past conventions, Wu said that negotiations were required to arrange the visits of high-level officials.
Taiwan sent working level officials to China to make arrangements for Koo Chen-fu (
"Koo and Wang were not government officials but civilians. We made these kind of arrangements for civilians [to visit], not to mention such a high-level official in China as Chen Yunlin," Wu said.
Regarding the president's second proposal, Wu also said that he would be more than happy to visit China as long as the visit was in the interests of the Taiwanese people.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
RSS