The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on Friday denied a report that China has quietly decided since 2004 to ease its stance on recovering Taiwan by force if necessary.
A senior DPP official said he had seen no sign Beijing was playing down its vow to unify Taiwan with China.
"China has been increasing the number of missiles targeting Taiwan, suppressing our space in the international community and refusing any forms of dialogue with Taiwanese leaders," said Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), head of the DPP's China affairs department, on Friday.
Lai made the remarks in response to a news report in the Washington Post on Friday that said China had adjusted its policy on Taiwan by accepting the current status quo of "two Chinas" with Taiwan independent "in fact but not in law."
"China doesn't need to talk about liberating Taiwan all the time now since it has adopted the `Anti-Secession Law,' which provides a legal basis for using force against Taiwan," Lai said.
The Washington Post report, citing diplomats and senior Beijing officials, said Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) had no plans to act militarily against Taiwan unless the situation changed in a way that risked causing him to "lose face."
The US has recognized the shift in Hu's policy toward Taiwan and a partnership of sorts has evolved in which Beijing relies on Washington to ensure that pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian (
Beijing's policy is to encourage more economic and other exchanges between the two rivals in hopes that, at some undefined point, China would become liberalized enough that peaceful unification would be possible, it also said.
A sign of warming relations between China and Taiwan, it said, was their agreement on Wednesday to launch regular non-stop, cross-strait charter passenger flights for holidays and special needs, as well as expanding cargo services.
Lai, however, denied the agreement was a sign of goodwill between Beijing and Taipei.
"Taiwan has long been ready to expand cross-strait air links but the process was stalled by China for two years. I do not think the belated agreement can be considered goodwill," Lai said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,