The diplomatic tussle between China and Taiwan in the South Pacific is set to escalate in April as Taiwan's six island allies have decided to boycott a meeting hosted by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
Wen is scheduled to visit countries including Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Cambodia, from April 1 to April 8 and is expected to hold the China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum Ministerial Conference 2006 with the island countries during his visit.
"The six countries we have official ties with in the region will not participate in the conference. China is doing everything possible to gain their favor, but there will be no problem with our ties with these countries given our efforts," said Donald Lee, director general of the ministry's Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
Taiwan's six diplomatic allies in the Pacific are Kirabati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
China's Fiji meeting
The China summit, to be held in Fiji on April 1, will be attended by six other island countries that recognize China -- the Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and the Federated States of Micronesia.
The conference was a result of an initiative proposed by China's Vice Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎) at last October's Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting to promote China's cooperation with Pacific island countries in the areas of environmental protection, health, tourism, education, agriculture and fishing industries, according to a report in Hong Kong's Takungpao.
Lee said China originally wanted to tie in the conference with the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), the largest regional political club of which Taiwan is also a donor, but the PIF secretariat put the brakes on the plan to co-host the China summit after Taiwan protested.
China has been working hard to compete with Taiwan for political influence in the region. It has offered US$1.7 million to the government of Fiji to sponsor the one-day conference and Fiji has received up to US$13 million in grants from China so far this year, the official said.
"The money China spent in squeezing Taiwan's diplomatic space is actually 10 times higher than [what we've spent]," Lee said.
Import workers
Meanwhile, Lee said the government is working on a project to bring workers from the nation's six Pacific allies to Taiwan.
"Currently, Taiwan has an intake of 320,000 foreign workers from Southeast Asian countries. The Pacific island countries are relatively small and have very low populations. If we introduce, say, 500 workers from each of these countries, I think this number can easily be absorbed by Taiwan's market and in the mean time, it will significantly benefit our small Pacific allies," Lee said.
The official said the details of the proposal are still being coordinated with the Labor Affairs Council and no specific timetable is available yet on when the worker scheme might begin.
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
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS