President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that Taipei would immediately engage in a “diplomatic war” with Beijing if his proposed “diplomatic truce” with China did not receive a positive response.
Through a “diplomatic truce” with Beijing, Ma said, both sides would no longer have to engage in malicious competition over diplomatic allies and Taiwan could drop its reputation as a state that engages in “checkbook diplomacy.”
“Some have criticized the proposal as wishful thinking, but it is not,” he told the Chinese-language Global Views magazine in an interview on Thursday.
The interview will be published in next month’s issue, which hits the shelves on Monday.
In the interview, Ma did not elaborate on what he would consider to be a “positive response” from Beijing, nor did he say what “diplomatic war” would imply.
AID
Ma said foreign aid was necessary, but added that it should not be used to secure diplomatic ties and should be limited to helping emerging states and the international community.
While the UN has recommended countries set aside 0.7 percent of their GDP for foreign aid, Ma said there was room for growth as Taiwan’s foreign aid represented only 0.15 percent of its GDP.
Hailing his just-concluded trip to Latin America and the Caribbean as a success, Ma said he did not talk money with leaders of the country’s six diplomatic allies and eight leaders of non-allied countries during the visit.
Ma also proposed to allow Chinese students to study in Taiwan, which in his view would increase competitiveness in schools, help cross-strait reconciliation and resolve the problem of insufficient student numbers.
“Twenty years from now, we might have a Tsing Hua University graduate head China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and the head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council from Beijing’s Tsinghua University. I don’t see anything wrong with that,” he said.
“How do you expect both sides to engage in a war if they are leaders of our government?” Ma said.
Ma said he believed there was trust on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, as highlighted by the fact that against all expectations, weekend charter flight services began soon after he took office in May.
He said, however, that it would take some time before dramatic changes in the cross-strait situation became apparent.
TOURISTS
Regarding the low numbers of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan, Ma said this did not worry him and that his understanding was that Beijing had been preoccupied with the Olympics and consequently had not had the time to focus on the matter.
Nor would the economy improve overnight, he said, adding he was confident his administration would overcome the difficulties and that Taiwanese should “just follow me.”
In Taipei yesterday, Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) said the “diplomatic truce” with Beijing would not only bring peace in the Taiwan Strait but would also help stabilize the global community and expedite investment in Taiwan.
The purpose of the proposal was to rebuild the country’s international reputation from a “troublemaker” into that of a responsible stakeholder, he said, adding that the Ma administration would maintain friendly relations with all countries, especially Japan and the US.
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