President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday poured cold water on US hopes for better cross-strait relations after next year's presidential elections when he said Taiwan and China would never resume negotiations if Beijing refused to abandon its "one China" policy.
Chen said that while he welcomed most of American Institute in Taiwan Chairman Stephen Young's speech before the Foundation on International and Cross-Strait Studies (FICS) Conference on Monday, he disagreed with Young on several issues, including his interpretation of Chinese President Hu Jintao's (
Chen said he did not think Hu's comments indicated that Beijing was looking for ways to open contact with Taiwan's next president as it had long suspended cross-strait talks during the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime, which recognizes the "one China" policy.
"How do you expect Beijing to sit down and talk with the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP])?" he said. "To expect China to put aside differences with Taiwan is like `catching fish in a tree.' I personally do not think both sides will resume negotiations even with a new president next year."
This could change, though, if China were willing to relinquish its "one China" policy and goal of ultimate unificatio, the president said.
Chen made the remarks while receiving a US delegation led by former AIT chairman Richard Bush at the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon.
Chen said that the best part of Young's speech was that "China's democratization may turn out to be the single most important prerequisite for seeking a resolution of the Taiwan question that is acceptable to both sides."
"A better way to say it is that China's democratization is indeed the single most important prerequisite for seeking a resolution of the Taiwan question that is acceptable to both sides," Chen said.
On the US government's opposition to the DPP administration's referendum proposal seeking UN membership under the name "Taiwan," Chen said the referendum was a democratic way to send a clear message to China that Taiwanese do not want to be a part of the People's Republic of China.
"To put it more directly, it is a referendum seeking to reject unification," he said.
Chen also dismissed Young's criticism that the referendum was inconsistent with the spirit of his public commitment to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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