Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) said yesterday that the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) had so far authorized the foundation to negotiate only one issue listed on the agenda for a third round of cross-strait talks.
Chiang said the MAC had authorized negotiations on joint efforts to combat crime, but that several other items were on the planned agenda.
The other issues are establishing a cooperative mechanism for banking supervision; cross-strait securities and futures market supervision; financial transactions; currency exchanges; double taxation; investment protection; and quarantine and inspection of agricultural products.
Although the MAC had agreed to let the SEF negotiate on combating crime, the council had yet to specify the content of the negotiations or approve a team of negotiators, Chiang said.
Setting a date for the third round of talks required both sides to first reach a consensus on the agenda, Chiang said, adding that he hoped the negotiations would take place in the first half of the year.
China made the remarks at a question-and-answer session after the foundation’s year-end press conference yesterday afternoon.
The administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said its cross-strait policy was to proceed gradually and tackle easier and more urgent economic issues before working on thornier, less pressing political questions.
But Beijing has indicated that it wants to address economic and political issues concurrently.
Chiang said yesterday that both sides had reached a consensus on dealing first with easier issues related to the economy and gradually moving toward more difficult and political ones.
Emphasizing that the ASEAN Plus Three forum — which consists of the ASEAN countries and Japan, South Korea and China — had put pressure on Taiwan, Chiang said a cross-strait economic cooperation agreement would be key to addressing the problem.
Chiang said the SEF had not yet received any instructions on negotiating political issues, including a truce and military confidence-building measures.
In related news, the Center for Prediction Markets at National Chengchi University yesterday said the number of Chinese visitors to Taiwan would likely be less than 20,000 this month.
Since a cross-strait agreement in June to increase the daily quota for Chinese tourists to 3,000, an average of 350 Chinese visitors have entered the country per day, it said.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
RSS