Taiwan will avoid military competition with China under his administration, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday, defending his efforts to maintain the cross-strait “status quo” against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) charges of his possible attempts to seek unification.
Ma, whose talk of a cross-strait peace agreement within the next decade raised concerns about possible political negotiations with China, reiterated his “three noes” policy as the major principle of cross-strait relations during a meeting with military generals, stressing that his administration would prevent war across the strait.
“Faced with the rise of the mainland and its growth in military power, it is impossible and unnecessary to engage in military competition with the mainland. We should work to systematize the ‘no use of force’ part, so that Chinese leaders would be reluctant to solve cross-strait issues via wars,” he said.
The “three noes” policy refers to Ma’s proposal of maintaining the cross-strait “status quo” with no unification, no independence and no use of force.
In recent discussions about cross-strait policies during presidential debates and policy platform presentations, Tsai remained critical of the Ma administration maintaining close ties with China and warned that if Ma were re-elected, Taiwan could face the question of ultimate unification.
In defending the government’s efforts to improve cross-strait relations over the past three years, Ma said that the so-called “1992 consensus” — which refers to an alleged consensus with Beijing on the concept of “one China, with each side having its own interpretation” — is designed to help the two sides of the Taiwan Strait put aside their political differences and focus on cross-strait exchanges.
The signing of 16 agreements under the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), he said, helped revive Taiwan’s economy while maintaining the nation’s dignity.
“No matter what we sign, maintaining the cross-strait ‘status quo’ under the constitutional structure and pushing for peace across the Taiwan Strait under the ‘1992 consensus’ remain our major principle,” he said.
Ma, who is seeking re-election in the Jan. 14 election, yesterday launched another wave of “home-stay” campaigns, visiting local night markets in Chiayi and staying in the city overnight.
He is scheduled to continue the home-stay trip in Miaoli and Taoyuan today and tomorrow before returning to Taipei.
Ma is scheduled to begin a nationwide campaign tour on Tuesday, canvassing in the streets of the eastern cities of Hualien and Taitung, and then continuing to Pingtung, Greater Kaohsiung and Tainan, before holding large-scale campaign parties in Changhua, Taipei, Taoyuan and Greater Tainan on the weekend before the presidential election.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater