Recent announcements by senior Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politicians proposing three alternatives to the so-called “1992 consensus” are “not a bad thing,” DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday.
“It’s not a bad thing for people within the party to communicate their ideas on dealing with [cross-strait] problems,” she said, one day after former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) unveiled his thoughts on a “Taiwan consensus,” following similar proposals floated by former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).
Su, a possible contender in next year’s presidential election, yesterday said future cross-strait relations should be based on Taiwan’s democratic foundations and that any change to the “status quo” had to be settled by the 23 million Taiwanese.
“The [solution] to cross-strait problems ... is to find out the overarching public consensus and persevere in the values we find worthy,” Su said. “This is the democratic process.”
His “Taiwan consensus” reflects the view that “Taiwan is a sovereign country independent of the People’s Republic of China,” he said, adding that any change to the nation’s official title, the Republic of China (ROC), would require majority approval.
Claiming his ideas would appeal to voters on both sides of the political spectrum, Su said his consensus was closely connected with the DPP’s ideology as well as President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) New Year address, which called for Taiwanese to decide their future.
“With the development of cross-strait relations, bilateral cooperation is now inevitable ... but we must uphold the idea that while we can buy and sell anything, our sovereignty is something that can’t be bought or sold,” Su said.
“Those values will not change in the next dozen years or the next 120 years,” he added.
His remarks, interpreted by some DPP watchers as appealing to more moderate voters ahead of a possible presidential bid, has left Hsieh, who offered a “constitutional consensus” last month, scrambling to defend his earlier ideas.
According to a transcript of an upcoming interview he recorded yesterday with Era News, Hsieh said he believed his consensus, which calls for cross-strait relations to be based on the ROC Constitution, “surpassed [Su’s ideas].”
“Basically I believe that Su’s ideas are just modeled on the Resolution on Taiwan’s Future,” Hsieh said, referring to the 1999 resolution ratified by the DPP, an integral part of the party’s policy. “This isn’t a problem, but I believe we can go one step further.”
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods