Taiwan and China are expected to hold their fourth dialogue since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office last year and sign four agreements in December, Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) said yesterday.
“The dialogue will probably be held in Taiwan in December. It will see the signing of pacts on fishing cooperation, standardization, avoiding double taxation and investment protection,” he said in an interview with the Broadcasting Corp of China.
Chiang said the two sides would also discuss an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), but would not sign it during the dialogue.
Regarding a Chinese official’s recent remark that the time was ripe for Taipei and Beijing to hold political talks, Chiang said it was too early to hold political talks.
“Cross-strait exchange should move from discussing economic issues first and political issues later, discussing easy topics first and difficult topics later. The economy is important for Taiwan and this is a huge topic. So in the next couple of years, we should tackle economic issues, then educational and cultural issues, then political issues,” he said.
Since Ma took office, the two sides have further opened sea, air, tourism and postal links and plan to exchange tourism representative offices before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, in other news, former premier and minister of national defense Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) was due to arrive in Beijing yesterday, a local newspaper reported.
Hau, who served as Taiwan’s chief of the general staff, minister of national defense and premier in the 1980s and early 1990s, would be received by “Chinese military authorities” in Beijing, the United Daily News reported.
Ninety-year-old Hau is the father of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and a senior member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
He is also expected to meet China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) and attend the opening of a painting exhibition, the newspaper said.
A senior Chinese official has said China was open to discussing defense issues with Taiwan, but denied reports that representatives of each side’s military would hold their first meeting in 60 years in Hawaii this month.
In April, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Li Weiyi (李維一) said cross-strait military exchanges on the issue of military security and mutual trust could be initiated by retired servicemen.
EXPANSIONIST: China deploys an average of 40 to 50 warships and coast guard vessels daily in the South China Sea, despite pledges not to militarize the region, an official said China is attempting to expand its influence across the First Island Chain and increase pressure on Japan by sending coast guard vessels into waters off of Taiwan under the pretext of maritime negotiations with Japan and the Philippines, a national security official said yesterday. China’s recent actions in the waters east of Taiwan and Japan and the Philippines’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ) are attempts to establish dominance in First Island Chain waters, said the official who declined to be named, adding that this is “expansion disguised as law enforcement.” Framing China’s actions solely as a cross-strait issue is a serious misjudgment that
Through analyzing fossil evidence, a research team at National Taiwan University (NTU) discovered the largest endemic bird to have lived in Taiwan, naming it Pavo miejue, or extinct peafowl (滅絕孔雀). The Mikado pheasant, which is printed on the back of the NT$1,000 bank note, was previously believed to be the biggest endemic bird to Taiwan. The research team’s findings suggest that Pavo miejue lived during the Pleistocene epoch tens of thousands of years ago. It is the first endemic extinct bird species discovered and formally named in Taiwan. The study was coauthored by NTU Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修),
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport is to suspend its automated Skytrain service connecting Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 starting on July 1 to facilitate connection works for the upcoming Terminal 3, the airport operator said today. Passengers and staff who need to travel between the two terminals after the suspension can instead use the Taoyuan MRT or the airport's 24-hour shuttle bus service, Taoyuan International Airport Corp said. The Taoyuan MRT Airport Line directly links the two terminals, while the shuttle buses are to operate around the clock, the company added. The Skytrain provides free transportation between the airport’s two terminals for travelers and
Taiwan ranked 42nd in terms of peacefulness among 163 countries, down five places from last year, according to this year’s Global Peace Index. With an overall score of 1.751, Taiwan dropped from 37th last year, the report published by the global Institute for Economics and Peace showed. The overall score measures a country’s level of peacefulness using 23 quantitative and qualitative indicators across three domains — ongoing domestic and international conflict, societal safety and security, and militarization. While Taiwan ranked 42nd worldwide, it was listed in ninth place among the 19 Asian-Pacific countries in the report, after New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia,
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