The US hopes for a peaceful development of cross-strait relations, but it will not "take ownership of the problem," which should be resolved peacefully by Taiwan and China, a senior US State Department official said on Thursday.
Stressing that peaceful cross-strait relations were in the US' interest, the US official, who declined to be named, said that it was an issue which must be settled by the two sides of the strait through exchanges and dialogue.
Washington would only ask Taiwan and China to hold direct talks and peacefully mend their ties in compliance with the Taiwan Relations Act, but would not "co-manage" cross-strait affairs as Chinese Premier Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) proposed in a speech given in New York last September, he said.
Since Hu's speech, US and Chinese leaders had met several times, but the so-called "co-management" of cross-strait affairs have not happened because the US is not entitled to speak for the Taiwanese public, he said.
More tourist and charter flight exchanges would help boost mutual understanding and bolster peace across the Taiwan Strait, the US official said.
He added that he believed Chinese tourists would be able to visit Taiwan soon as the two sides had agreed to open special charter flight services across the Taiwan Strait.
Pointing to Hong Kong as an example, he said that time had proven that opening the territory to Chinese tourists was mutually beneficial.
Taiwan and China should also step up bilateral economic and technical exchanges, and US firms operating in Taiwan were keenly hoping for an easing of restrictions on cross-strait economic exchanges and the establishment of direct transport links between the two sides, he said.
He added that this was something that serves US interests and helps US businesses in Taiwan explore their maximum potential.
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