A former National Security Council (NSC) official yesterday said Taipei needs to be very careful about how it responds to a major espionage case involving China lest it impact other issues.
Philip Yang (楊永明), a senior adviser at the NSC from 2008 until last year and now a professor of political science at National Taiwan University, told the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club that the arrest last month of General Lo Hsien-che (羅賢哲) on espionage charges served as a reminder that despite warming relations across the Taiwan Strait, in the military and intelligence spheres, “Taiwan and China remain locked in a Cold War mindset.”
However, despite the seriousness of the charges against Lo — whose actions since he began spying for China in 2004 could have severely compromised Taiwan’s national security and its ties with the US military — Yang said President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration should choose its response carefully to avoid “overspill.”
Asked by the Taipei Times if Taipei could perhaps retaliate by canceling a visit to Taiwan next week by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), Yang said the controversy should not be linked to other areas of engagement with China, adding that escalation could have “domestic implications.”
So far, the Ma administration has yet to officially complain to Beijing over the Lo incident and China’s refusal to draw down its military posture. This silence is in stark contrast to the way in which Taipei reacted to a decision by the Philippines earlier this month to deport, at Beijing’s request, 14 Taiwanese fraud suspects to China despite opposition by Taiwanese officials.
Given the severity of the case, Taipei’s muted response is also at odds with its reaction to comments by former Japanese representative to Taiwan Masaki Saito in 2009 to the effect that Taiwan’s status remained “unresolved,” sparking calls by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators that he be expelled. Saito, who resigned over the comments and returned to Japan in December that year, was in the interim treated by Taiwanese officials as more or less persona non grata.
In June 2008, amid a dispute over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), Taiwan recalled its envoy to Japan and the “w-word” (war) was bandied about by top officials in Taipei.
Asked why, when it came to Japan and the Philippines, Taipei adopted a muscular diplomatic posture and deliberately linked incidents to other unrelated areas — in the Philippines’ case stricter reviews of applications by Filipinos seeking to work in Taiwan and unspecified “measures” — while Beijing did not appear to ever suffer the consequences of its belligerent actions, Yang was noncommittal.
Greenpeace yesterday said that it is to appeal a decision last month by the Taipei High Administrative Court to dismiss its 2021 lawsuit against the Ministry of Economic Affairs over “loose” regulations governing major corporate electricity consumers. The climate-related lawsuit — the first of its kind in Taiwan — sought to require the government to enforce higher green energy thresholds on major corporations to reduce emissions in light of climate change and an uptick in extreme weather. The suit, filed by Greenpeace East Asia, the Environmental Jurists Association and four individual plaintiffs, was dismissed on May 8 following four years of litigation. The
A former officer in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who witnessed the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre has warned that Taiwan could face a similar fate if China attempts to unify the country by force. Li Xiaoming (李曉明), who was deployed to Beijing as a junior officer during the crackdown, said Taiwanese people should study the massacre carefully, because it offers a glimpse of what Beijing is willing to do to suppress dissent. “What happened in Tiananmen Square could happen in Taiwan too,” Li told CNA in a May 22 interview, ahead of the massacre’s 36th anniversary. “If Taiwanese students or
DIPLOMACY: It is Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo’s first visit to Taiwan since he took office last year, while Eswatini’s foreign minister is also paying a visit A delegation led by Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo arrived in Taiwan yesterday afternoon and is to visit President William Lai (賴清德) today. The delegation arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 4:55pm, and was greeted by Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍). It is Arevalo’s first trip to Taiwan since he took office last year, and following the visit, he is to travel to Japan to celebrate the 90th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Arevalo said at the airport that he is very glad to make the visit to Taiwan, adding that he brings an important message of responsibility
About 3,000 people gathered at events in Taipei yesterday for an annual candlelight vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, a brutal crackdown by Chinese authorities on a student-led demonstration in Beijing on June 4 36 years ago. A candlelight vigil organized by the New School for Democracy and other human rights groups began at 7pm on Democracy Boulevard outside Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, with the theme "Resist Transnational Repression, Defy Totalitarianism." At about 8pm, organizers announced that about 3,000 people had attended the event, which featured brief speeches by human rights advocates from Taiwan and China, including Hong Kong, as well
RSS