China warned the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday that its stance on relations with Beijing could threaten a hard-won state of peaceful coexistence.
China has slowly ramped up the rhetoric ahead of the Jan. 14 presidential and legislative elections, offering both economic incentives and making veiled threats that a vote for the DPP would harm vital trade ties.
Beijing will be hoping that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who has signed a series of landmark agreements with Beijing since he became president in 2008, gets back into office and continues his policy of detente.
China has made little secret of its distaste for the DPP, even as its candidate, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), tries to lay out a more moderate line than former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Speaking at a regular news briefing, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Yang Yi (楊毅) yesterday said a return to those days would be a disaster. Chen held office from 2000 to 2008.
“Upholding the ‘Taiwan independence’ platform of one country on either side of the Taiwan Strait would be a step backward into the era of Chen Shui-bian and that would inevitably threaten the peaceful development of cross-strait ties,” Yang said.
Yang repeated that whoever is in charge must accept the so-called “1992 consensus.” The DPP says the “1992 consensus” does not exist.
“Denying the ‘1992 consensus’ will wreck the basis for cross-strait consultations, which will of course be unable to continue,” Yang said.
“I will not make any comments about the election, [but] we still hope that compatriots on both sides of the Strait will work hard to maintain the current good trend of the peaceful development of relations,” he added.
Yang also announced that Taiwanese will be able to apply to set up small businesses, called “individual industrial and commercial households,” in China.
The first locations opening to Taiwanese will be Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, as well as Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu, Hubei and Sichuan provinces, with businesses limited to eateries and retail.
According to Chinese law, an “individual industrial and commercial household” refers to natural persons or families running such an industrial and commercial operation, and they can only operate businesses allowed by the relevant laws and policies.
Additional reporting by CNA
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
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
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