Taiwan should adopt “a slower pace” in cross-strait developments to avoid a potential misstep, focusing instead on valuing its own national advancement, former German federal minister for special affairs Egon Bahr warned last year, sources said.
According to sources, while meeting with several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials, including Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), during his visit to Taiwan last year, Bahr said cross-strait relations involved critical issues of regional balance and security.
Taipei should ratchet down the speed of cross-strait developments to avoid any mistakes and place greater importance on its own national development, Bahr reportedly said.
Bahr, a mainstay in German politics from the 1960s until 1990, played an instrumental role in the normalization of relations between East and West Germany ahead of their eventual reunification.
Bahr is credited with influencing Ostpolitik, which was adopted by former West German chancellor Willy Brandt, by proposing a new policy of Wandel durch Annaherung (“change through rapprochement”). The implementation of the new policy sought to put an end to the entrenched East-West divide through reconciliation and stronger collaboration.
According to the sources, Bahr said he signed the Basic Treaty with East Germany and reached a consensus with the communist state on the principle that the reunification of Germany lay within the historical destiny of both sides and that the two Germanies were not foreign states to each other.
However, Bahr said such an approach could only have worked in the conflict between East and West Germany and it was not applicable to cross-strait relations, the sources added.
Commenting on Bahr’s reported statements, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Su Chen-ching (蘇震清) said that for Bahr, who played a key role in the reunification of two divided nations, to tell Taiwan to slow down the pace on cross-strait developments highlighted the critical nature of what should be a core issue for the nation.
Su said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had implemented several “pro-China” policies since he took office in 2008 and triggered widespread public criticism.
He added that the rapid pace of Ma’s turn toward China also “raised great concerns for many.”
“Taiwanese should awaken to China’s pro-reunification stance,” Su said. “The nation must put more emphasis on its own advancement as opposed to constantly looking toward China.”
Senior KMT officials also commented, saying that both Beijing and Taipei had emphasized their mutual recognition to put aside disputes, to target peaceful development, to respect history and to face reality.
They added that the present approach was to facilitate mutual development in an amiable manner.
Translated by Stacy Hsu, Staff Writer
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas