US President George W. Bush is not expected to criticize Taiwan during his meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) at the White House in April over President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) decision to cease operations of the National Unification Council (NUC), a Taiwanese official said yesterday.
"Both Taiwan and the United States are liberal democracies and have shared values in freedom, democracy and peace, while China is the world's sixth-most dictatorial country. It would be unacceptable to the American people if Bush were to criticize Taiwan during his meeting with the top Chinese leader," Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said.
In December 2003, Bush criticized Chen during his meeting with visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) over Chen's insistence on holding a referendum simultaneously with the 2004 presidential election. With Hu scheduled to visit the US in April, some observers have speculated that a similar incident may arise over Chen's NUC campaign.
Speaking during a television interview, Wu indicated that he was confident there would not be a repeat of the 2003 incident. To the best of his understanding, he said, many Americans felt that Bush's language in 2003 was inappropriate.
"Promoting freedom and democracy has been a major US foreign policy goal. I don't think that the United States would appease totalitarian China at Taiwan's expense," Wu said.
Wu added that Chen's decision to cease the operations of the NUC would not bring the two sides of the Taiwan Strait to the brink of war.
"If there is a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, it's because China has deployed a large number of missiles targeting Taiwan," Wu said. "China's military buildup against Taiwan is the root cause of any cross-strait crisis."
In response to an editorial in yesterday's edition of Wen Wei Po, Beijing's Hong Kong mouthpiece, which said that Taiwan and the US had colluded over the scrapping of the NUC, Wu yesterday said that the newspaper's editorial had misunderstood the cross-strait relationship.
"Saying that the US and Taiwan have collaborated to sabotage the cross-strait status quo is a serious misunderstanding," Wu said.
During negotiations with the US over the fate of the NUC, the US came to understand Taiwan's position very well, Wu said.
"The US' stance toward the Taiwan Strait has been to uphold peace and democracy, and that's the same as our goal, 100 percent," he said.
Additional reporting by Chang Yun-ping
The German city of Hamburg on Oct. 14 named a bridge “Kaohsiung-Brucke” after the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. The footbridge, formerly known as F566, is to the east of the Speicherstadt, the world’s largest warehouse district, and connects the Dar-es-Salaam-Platz to the Brooktorpromenade near the Port of Hamburg on the Elbe River. Timo Fischer, a Free Democratic Party member of the Hamburg-Mitte District Assembly, in May last year proposed the name change with support from members of the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union. Kaohsiung and Hamburg in 1999 inked a sister city agreement, but despite more than a quarter-century of
Taiwanese officials are courting podcasters and influencers aligned with US President Donald Trump as they grow more worried the US leader could undermine Taiwanese interests in talks with China, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has said Taiwan would likely be on the agenda when he is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) next week in a bid to resolve persistent trade tensions. China has asked the White House to officially declare it “opposes” Taiwanese independence, Bloomberg reported last month, a concession that would mark a major diplomatic win for Beijing. President William Lai (賴清德) and his top officials
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday expressed “grave concerns” after Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) reiterated the city-state’s opposition to “Taiwanese independence” during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強). In Singapore on Saturday, Wong and Li discussed cross-strait developments, the Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “Prime Minister Wong reiterated that Singapore has a clear and consistent ‘one China’ policy and is opposed to Taiwan independence,” it said. MOFA responded that it is an objective fact and a common understanding shared by many that the Republic of China (ROC) is an independent, sovereign nation, with world-leading
‘ONE CHINA’: A statement that Berlin decides its own China policy did not seem to sit well with Beijing, which offered only one meeting with the German official German Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul’s trip to China has been canceled, a spokesperson for his ministry said yesterday, amid rising tensions between the two nations, including over Taiwan. Wadephul had planned to address Chinese curbs on rare earths during his visit, but his comments about Berlin deciding on the “design” of its “one China” policy ahead of the trip appear to have rankled China. Asked about Wadephul’s comments, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) said the “one China principle” has “no room for any self-definition.” In the interview published on Thursday, Wadephul said he would urge China to
RSS