In retaliation for China's successful scheme to sever diplomatic ties between Chad and Taiwan, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday said that they will push a proposal to block the proposed visit to Taiwan of the director of China's Taiwan Affairs Office Chen Yunlin (
DPP legislators Chuang Ho-tzu (莊和子), Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) and Hsueh Ling (薛凌) yesterday said that they would jointly propose a motion to request that the government deny Chen permission to visit Taiwan unless China recognizes Taiwan as a country with independent sovereignty.
"The people of Taiwan should understand China's ambition [to oppress Taiwan] in this incident. Unless China abolishes its `Anti-Secession Law,' we think that granting a visit to Taiwan to a high-ranking Chinese official who does not recognize Taiwan's independence would be an acknowledgement of that law and act of surrendering to China," Chai said yesterday.
Chai said that they would collect more lawmakers' signatures to facilitate their proposal, which will also request that the Executive Yuan suspend any policies to open up cross-strait exchanges.
DPP Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (
"It is an insult to Premier Su and it is quite obvious that China is targeting him," Hsiao said yesterday. "But it is fortunate that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs obtained the information of the break-off in advance, otherwise the aftermath of Premier Su's visit to Chad would be unimaginable."
DPP caucus whip Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津) yesterday said that China had been resorting to every conceivable means to squeeze Taiwan's international space and that Chad's breaking ties with Taiwan was just the latest example of Beijing's malicious repression of Taiwan.
Yeh urged international society not to turn a blind eye to China's bullying.
"While many pan-blue camp leaders and lawmakers swarm to China and make pilgrimages to Beijing, Chinese authorities never give up their oppression of Taiwan. I urge all the Taiwanese people to clearly see China's true colors through this incident," Yeh said.
Meanwhile, DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun yesterday denounced China's manipulation of Taiwan's ties with Chad, and said that Beijing's actions should be a wake-up call to people who insist on leaning toward China.
Yu reacted to the abrupt diplomatic switch through DPP spokesman Tsai Huang-liang (
Yu also criticized Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS