Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) said yesterday that he had reservations about whether the nation would be able to open cross-strait charter flights around election time to help Taiwanese living in China return home to vote.
"The proposed charter flight plan should go through a thorough evaluation by the Mainland Affairs Council first," Chang said while fielding questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (
"It is also inappropriate to make our standpoint clear before China does so in cross-strait negotiations," he said.
The KMT lawmaker said Chang should fight for the implementation of the charter flights, because people living in China were depending on the government to help them exercise their referendum rights.
Tsai also questioned why the premier could not endorse such a plan immediately, given that Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) had expressed his support for direct cross-strait links.
Hsieh has said that the links should be developed by expanding the scope of current holiday charter flights.
Chang said that Hsieh, as a presidential candidate, was supposed to propose campaign platforms regarding cross-strait policies, while the premier could not propose such policies during the legislative session.
Taiwan would benefit from more integrated military strategies and deployments if the US and its allies treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “single theater of operations,” a Taiwanese military expert said yesterday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said he made the assessment after two Japanese military experts warned of emerging threats from China based on a drill conducted this month by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command. Japan Institute for National Fundamentals researcher Maki Nakagawa said the drill differed from the
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