US assistance in helping Taiwan acquire defensive weapons is key to the development of stable cross-strait ties, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said on Thursday.
Lai made the comments at a meeting with visiting US Representative and co-chair of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus Phil Gingrey, a statement said.
The statement, released by the MAC on Friday, quoted Lai as saying that relations between Taiwan and China were improving, describing this as a historic moment.
Taiwan and China should continue to build mutual trust through talks and lay the foundation for peace, she said.
Lai also said that increasing interaction between the populations of Taiwan and China would strengthen Taiwanese identity.
Lai said the two sides should respect each other’s existence in the international arena and treat each other with equality and dignity.
For his part, Gingrey said Taiwan should continue to apply to join international organizations including the UN, to which Lai responded that the people of Taiwan had a right to participate in the international community in a dignified manner.
China, which has blocked Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, should be able to understand how the Taiwanese public feels, Lai said.
Gingrey arrived in Taiwan on Wednesday for a four-day visit. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) described him as one of Taiwan’s most faithful friends in Congress.
Gingrey endorsed a House of Representatives resolution that marked the 30th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act. The resolution reiterates the principles in the Taiwan Relations Act, including providing Taiwan with defensive weapons.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift