Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) wants to talk about Taiwan when he meets US President George W. Bush but is also willing to take up trade and currency disputes, China's Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
Bush says he hopes Hu will discuss China's soaring trade surplus with the US and disputes over its currency. China wants to hear a firmer stance from Washington over Taiwan.
"The Taiwan question is the most important and the most sensitive core issue in the China-US relationship," said Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎), a deputy foreign minister. "Leaders of the two countries will most naturally talk about the Taiwan question."
Bush is under pressure to get China to take action to reduce its trade surplus with the US, which hit a record US$202 billion last year.
But Beijing says Taiwan is the more pressing issue.
China regularly threatens to attack if Taipei moves toward trying to make its de facto independence permanent.
The US has no official ties with Taiwan but is the island's main arms supplier and could be drawn into any conflict.
Washington says it wants China and Taiwan to maintain the current status quo and has been mildly critical of Taiwanese moves that appear to nudge the nation closer to formal independence.
"We hope the US will in real earnest honor its commitments and send no wrong signals to the secessionist forces for so-called Taiwan independence, and we hope the US will join hands with China to oppose and counter secessionist activities for Taiwan independence," Yang said.
Yang said Hu was ready to discuss disputes over China's currency but wouldn't give any details of what he might say.
Washington says the currency is undervalued by up to 40 percent, giving Chinese exporters an unfair price advantage.
"We stand ready to hold exchanges with other countries on the question of the exchange rate," Yang said.
China says its currency reform is being modulated to maintain domestic and international economic stability.
"The Chinese side attaches great importance to the concerns of the US side regarding the imbalance in two-way trade," Yang said.
He noted that a delegation of more than 200 Chinese business executives traveling in the US this month had signed or was prepared to sign deals with US companies worth some US$16.2 billion.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods