The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) will be paying close attention to whether former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰), who is due to visit China next month, will sign a document on cross-strait relations while there, MAC Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday.
Wu was attending a forum held by the China Times on the enactment of the "Anti-Secession" Law legislated by China two years ago and made the remarks following the forum.
According to the KMT, Lien plans to travel to China to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). It will be Lien's third visit to China. Last April, Lien led a 170-member delegation of business leaders and party officials to an economic and trade forum in Beijing.
Lien plans to discuss issues that include allowing more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan.
Lien first visited China in April 2005, a month after China enacted the "Anti-Secession Law."
Wu said that people of Taiwan have grave doubts about the wisdom of interactions between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since Beijing passed the "Anti-Secession" Law.
The content of the first closed-door meeting between the KMT and the CCP in 2005, has to date not been made public.
"We believe that the Taiwanese people would be suspicious about meetings with political connotations held between the KMT and the CCP in the future," Wu said.
Chen Ming-tong (陳明通), professor at the National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of National Development, yesterday said that Beijing would try to frame the pan-blue camp with the communiques that Lien and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) signed with China.
"If the pan-blue camp wins power in the presidential election next year, China would have grounds to ask them to carry out pro-China policies," Chen said.
Chen pointed out that Beijing has noted that the communiques that Lien and Soong signed have not been implemented and there is a rumor that Lien will meet Hu for the third time next month and sign an important document concerning the future direction of cross-strait relations. Chen urged the government to prepare for this situation.
Wu said that the system of government in a democratic country should be respected and the government is the only organization that is empowered to deal with diplomacy and policy, stressing that other non-governmental groups could assist and coordinate with the government yet they cannot replace the government or work against the government.
The council will pay close attention to any China visit and still hopes there will be mutual understanding and cooperation with the opposition parties and that clashes between the government and the opposition party are the last thing that the council wants to see, Wu 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,