President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday pledged to improve diplomatic ties with the nation’s allies as it was reported that El Salvador was moving to establish ties with China.
He said that the government would not recognize diplomatic ties between Taiwan’s allies and China.
“Dual recognition is not what we are pursuing. The government will focus its efforts on strengthening ties with its allies,” Ma told reporters at the Presidential Office.
Salvadoran president-elect Mauricio Funes has repeatedly promised to switch ties to Beijing upon taking office in June.
Ma said more and more countries in Latin America were electing leftist national leaders, but his administration would seek to maintain ties with existing allies, regardless of their political ideology.
“Our diplomatic truce with the mainland does not mean that we are having a diplomatic vacation and it certainly doesn’t mean a diplomatic coma. We will continue strengthening ties with our allies and promoting relations with non-allies,” he said.
In discussing the nation’s bid for an observership at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May, the president promised to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty while seeking the observer status.
Ma said the government would apply for observer status under the name “Republic of China,” “Taiwan” or “Chinese Taipei,” and insisted that the nation would not join international organizations as part of China.
“Of course we will not return to international society as part of mainland China because it would be belittling our sovereignty ... We will not sacrifice our sovereignty and national dignity in return for participation in international organizations,” Ma said.
When asked to comment on his previous remarks that the government would conduct negotiations with China at an undisclosed location outside of Taiwan next month about the WHA bid, Ma declined to elaborate on the issue, but said the government would make public the negotiation results at a proper time.
The president defended his “diplomatic truce” with China and his flexible diplomacy policy, saying he was confident that these policies were having a positive impact on cross-strait relations.
Ma said the issue regarding Taiwan’s participation in the WHA should be handled under the “1992 consensus,” which pan-blue figures say means “one China, with each side having its own interpretation.”
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Wang Yi (王毅) told CCTV earlier this month that he was “cautiously optimistic” on Taiwan’s bid to join the WHA as an observer.
The WHA, the decision-making body of the WHO, is scheduled to meet from May 18 to May 27 in Geneva, Switzerland.
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
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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