Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit yesterday to the Flora Expo site, which opened one hour early to accommodate the envoy and was cordoned off by a large police detachment to keep protesters at bay, highlighted the quasi--presidential treatment he received during his three-day visit, critics said.
Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said even senior government dignitaries were not extended such courtesies.
“Chen’s arrangements almost feel like some high central government figure was touring the country … Even prime ministers don’t receive the same [level of treatment],” Hsieh said.
This was not the first time a visit by Chen has been criticized for the lavishness of his reception. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials have blasted the National Police Agency for dispatching thousands of officers during all three of his visits, which occurred in November 2008, December last year and this week.
Chen is a former head of the Taiwan Affairs Office and a standing committee member at the Political Consultative Conference, Beijing’s political advisory committee. His visits to Taiwan have taken place under his chairmanship of the semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.
His status, and why he would be accorded meetings with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in November 2008 and Mainland Affairs Council Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) on Tuesday, has also come into question.
DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) likened the treatment afforded the Chinese envoy to -“presidential-level courtesy.”
Visiting heads of state wouldn’t receive such protection, he said.
“We don’t understand what kind of person the government takes Chen Yunlin for,” he said.
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