Beijing has begun to emphasize the development of growing cross-strait ties as a foundation for unification between Taiwan and China, local academics said in a meeting in Taipei yesterday.
Chen Chun-sheng (陳春生), an honorary professor at National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of National Development, said that China has gradually replaced its “peaceful unification” strategy with “peaceful development.”
By strengthening private ties between Taiwan and China, he said that Beijing was attempting to soften the public image of China, while at the same time gaining greater control of wider segments of Taiwan’s economy and politics.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
“Their final target is not only to … soften independence [forces] and push for unification, but also [complete] unification in the long run,” he said at a forum hosted by the Taiwan Association of -University Professors and Taiwan Thinktank.
“China has also never given up its rhetoric that it could use force against Taiwan,” Chen said.
As part of this policy, he said, Beijing has continued to treat Taiwan as an internal issue, refusing to support any efforts from Taipei to expand its global space, including participation in international organizations.
The issue, he said, was exemplified by Chinese opposition to Taiwan’s participation in the Tokyo International Film Festival in October.
“Despite the warming of relations between Taiwan and China, the Chinese authorities do not view its connections with Taiwan as a sort of ‘brothership,’” Chen said. “Instead, it continues to meaninglessly put pressure on Taiwan through its actions.”
Chen Yen-hui (陳延輝), a professor at the Graduate Institute of Political Science at National Taiwan Normal University, said that examples of these growing ties include the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with China, signed in June, which seeks to increase economic exchanges.
However, as a side effect of this policy, Chen Yen-hui added that it has resulted in growing economic disparities as well as having an impact on Taiwan’s domestic policies.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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