Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday dismissed the just-concluded Boao Forum for Asia as “nothing but a show” and a “united-front” tactic commonly used by Beijing.
“There is much for president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and vice president-elect Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) to learn before they are inaugurated,” she said.
“Thank God this forum happened before they were sworn into office. It would be a serious matter if they were pleased with themselves when things like this happened after they are inaugurated,” she said.
Lu made the remarks after appearing in court on a corruption charge brought against her for allegedly misusing her special allowance fund.
Lu yesterday criticized the local media for harboring unrealistic hopes based on the courtesies China extended to Siew during the forum and for blowing the significance and success of it out of proportion.
In related news, former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) yesterday said that Siew should apologize to the public for visiting China using a “Taiwanese compatriot travel document.”
Lin said Siew, who just returned from the Boao Forum, owed the public an apology and should mail the “Taiwanese compatriot travel document” back to Beijing.
Lin said that Siew and Su Chi (蘇起), a former Mainland Affairs Council chairman who accompanied Siew to the meeting, did not dare ask Beijing to issue them a pass for special guests.
It was disgraceful that the two visited China on a “Taiwanese compatriot travel document,” he said.
Lin made the remarks during a forum organized by the Taiwan Thinktank yesterday morning to discuss the impact of the Boao Forum for Asia.
Lin said that Taiwan should always stand up to China, saying that Siew did the right thing by protesting against a press release issued by Beijing that wrongfully depicted the consensus reached at the meeting between Siew and Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming (陳德銘). China later admitted the mistake and retracted the “one China” principle from the statement.
Lin said the incident once again proved that China constantly created trouble, adding that the KMT should learn a lesson from the Boao Forum; that is, national sovereignty should never be sacrificed for the mere sake of realizing election promises.
Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠), deputy chief of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Research and Planning Committee, warned that the Boao Forum may confuse front-line diplomats as Ma had promised to take a more moderate stance toward Beijing.
Liu said it seemed that the Ma administration would attach more importance to cross-strait policy than foreign policy or even let cross-strait policy dictate foreign policy, which is bound to deliver a serious blow to overall foreign policy.
Warning that the Ma administration must heed “the real trouble lying ahead,” Liu said overly high expectations for the Boao Forum would only fall into the trap of China’s “carrot and stick” approach.
Deputy director of the DPP’s Department of International Affairs Lai I-chung (賴怡忠) said the Boao Forum was a “complete failure,” both in format and content.
China’s attitude toward Taiwan’s WHO bid this year and removal of the missiles targeted at the nation is the real test for its sincerity in improving cross-strait relations, he said.
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