China has rejected Taiwan's offer to send an official to China's chief Taiwan negotiator Wang Daohan's (
The Chinese-language United Daily News reported that China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) has rejected the offer of Chang Chun-hsiung (
"China will not allow someone of such a high position to come. We don't want Taiwan to use the opportunity to make political maneuvers and give the outside the impression that Beijing and Taipei have resumed dialogue," the paper quoted ARATS deputy chairman Sun Yafu (
Sun would prefer that Chang send two envoys in his stead to Wang's funeral on Dec. 30 in Shanghai, the United Daily report said.
Wang, a Shanghainese and ARATS chairman, died of illness in Shanghai Saturday at the age of 90.
A mentor to former president Jiang Zemin (
Koo and Wang met again in Shanghai in 1998 and Koo invited Wang to visit Taiwan. Wang never came because Beijing accused President Chen Shui-bian (
The passing away of both Koo and Wang marks the end of an important period in Taiwan-China ties. China's appointment of the next ARATS chairman and his inaugural remarks will set the tone for future cross-Strait ties, analysts said.
But Beijing is in no hurry to appoint Wang's successor due to the cross-Strait tension.
"There isn't much need to appoint the new ARATS chairman. Maybe it will be made in half a year," the paper quoted Yang Jian, deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, as saying.
Yang foresees no improvement in cross-strait ties because Taiwan is unlikely to change its China policy before its 2008 presidential election.
Chen has urged China many times to reopen dialogue. Beijing rejected his call, saying the dialogue will not re-open until Chen has accepted that Taiwan is part of China, or at the very least accepts the so-called "1992 Consensus" -- in which negotiators from both sides agreed to stick to the "one China" principle but reserved their own interpretations of what that phrase meant.
Hong Kong's Ming Pao daily reported yesterday that former Chinese vice premier Qian Qichen (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching