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 military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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