Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) said his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) President Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), was not scheduled to meet President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) when he visits Taiwan for the coming round of talks in December. The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) announced on Tuesday that Taichung had been selected as the venue for the fourth meeting between the two heads.
Chen paid a brief and awkward courtesy call to Ma at the Taipei Guest House last November when he was in Taipei for the second round of cross-strait talks. The first round took place in Beijing.
At the Ma-Chen meeting, Ma made a brief speech, but Chen did not speak. While the public was curious about how Chen would address Ma during the meeting, Chen avoided the thorny issue by simply saying Ni hao (你好, “how are you”) when Ma greeted him and “this [gift] is for you” when he presented Ma with a painting of a galloping horse.
Chiang did not say why Chen and Ma would not meet.
Meanwhile, Ma visited Kaohsiung City yesterday to boost tourism after China prevented Chinese tourists from visiting the city to protest its screening of a documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.
Ma, accompanied by Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), visited the Liouhe Night Market last night to taste traditional Taiwanese snacks and later toured New Jyuejiang Shopping Area.
The visit came after China’s Taiwan Affairs Office confirmed that Chinese tour groups were avoiding Kaohsiung after the city insisted on showing the movie.
“Some forces in Kaohsiung joined hands with Tibetan and Xinjiang independence forces to create trouble and hurt China’s core interests,” Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Fan Liqing (范麗青) said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
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