If the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) regained power in next year’s presidential election, China would be given much less “weight” than it is given by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration, former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told a Washington audience.
However, this did not mean that Beijing would not get “significant” consideration he said, adding that the party would strive for good cross-strait relations.
“We would not be looking to China as a solution for all our problems, the way the KMT has been doing,” he said.
Wu said the WHO general assembly would meet next year at about the same time as the inauguration of the next Taiwanese president.
If the DPP wins, “we worry that China might all of a sudden not invite Taiwan to be an observer [at the World Health Assembly] anymore,” he said.
“That might happen. China might use the WHO to humiliate Taiwan’s new government. That would give cross-strait relations a very bad start,” he added.
NO PRECONDITIONS
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies on Tuesday, Wu said it would be impossible for the DPP to accept any political preconditions in negotiations with Beijing.
In the DPP debate on cross-strait relations with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading up to the presidential election, there would be “lots of similarities” in the positions taken by the DPP and the KMT, Wu said.
He said that Ma was making some “serious adjustments” to his political position on cross-strait relations and that to improve his chances of winning, he would campaign on a modified program that could be quite close to the DPP’s policies.
“There will be debate, but it will not be one between two camps with dramatically different views,” he said.
It has been speculated that if the DPP were to win the election, Wu, who served in the DPP administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) from 2000 until 2008, would be given a top job. A research professor at National Chengchi University, he now serves as an adviser to the DPP on international affairs.
Wu said polls showed that Ma could be in “very serious trouble” and that the DPP had a very good chance of regaining power.
The DPP has done a great deal of “soul searching” and would not repeat past mistakes, Wu said.
ALIGNMENT
“We want to strengthen the strategy of aligning with the United States and Japan. We see Taiwan as a sovereign state and this position will not change,” he said.
Wu said that while none of the agreements signed by the KMT with China would be scrapped, they would be reviewed and, in cases where Taiwan was not getting a good deal, the agreements would be renegotiated.
Supporting Wu’s contention that the presidential election would be very close, the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday that polls put Ma and DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) “in a dead heat.”
It added that this had set the stage for eight months of “scandals, accusations and [hopefully] constructive policy debate.”
“While it would be folly to project a winner at this point in the race, security analysts say one likely outcome of the election, regardless of who wins, is a cool down in China-Taiwan ties,” the Journal said.
“Tsai has called for trade links with China to be developed in balance with its links to the rest of the world,” the paper said.
With polls showing the majority of Taiwanese supporting the “status quo,” under which Taiwan has de facto independence, the newspaper said “the political costs of pushing for what Beijing wants — new talks on politics and military relations — are likely too high for any Taiwanese leader to risk.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,