President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) his administration intends to sign with Beijing would bring “deeper, greater and longer” peace in the Taiwan Strait.
Ma said he believed signing a free-trade agreement (FTA) was the best way to defuse hostilities because closer economic relations between the two sides would make armed conflict increasingly costly.
“We will not put all our eggs in one basket,” he said. “When there is no conflict across the Taiwan Strait, we will be safer and receive more respect from the international community,” he said.
Ma made the remarks while attending the 98th birthday celebration of veteran diplomat Chao Chin-yung (趙金鏞) at Taipei Guest House yesterday morning.
‘UNORTHODOX DIPLOMACY’
Ma said he would take a Taiwan-centered approach and do everything that is beneficial to the people.
Ma also boasted about his foreign policy, saying the course he set was the proper one and that such “unorthodox diplomacy” had created more opportunities for the country and conformed to the national interest.
Ma said that since he came into office in May 2008, he has endeavored to ease tensions in the Taiwan Strait, fostered cross-strait detente and helped improve Taiwan’s international relations.
COUNTRY SEE, COUNTRY DO
The logic was simple, he said, because “if non-allied countries see the mainland is willing to improve ties with us, they will not be so afraid to improve their relationship with us.”
“Some say the policy is like asking the devil to write a prescription because they [China] are the source of the problem, so why do we want to ask them to resolve our problem?” he said. “My theory is that we must address the problem from the root.”
Describing his foreign policy as “unorthodox,” Ma said he liked to see more “honest” diplomacy in which foreign aid adheres to three principles: The reason must be valid, the process must be legal and the implementation must be effective.
RESPECT, DIGNITY
By doing so, Ma said that the country’s diplomats could hold their heads high and would receive more respect from the international community.
“Many ambassadors posted in countries we have diplomatic relations with have told me they feel a great sense of dignity in those countries,” he said. “They have more say in many matters and they can say ‘no’ when necessary.”
Ma said that to improve the country’s status in the international community, he wanted the country to act as “a responsible stakeholder and a peacemaker, not a troublemaker, and a provider of humanitarian assistance.”
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater