The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday dismissed the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) continued criticisms of the government’s US beef import policy, urging the opposition party to focus political debate on the economy and other issues.
KMT spokesman Yin Wei (殷瑋) defended what he said was the neutral stance of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration on the issue and said the DPP was using its officials to make the public believe that the former DPP government had not promised the WTO it would lift a ban on meats containing ractopamine in 2007.
“The DPP’s manipulation of the US beef issue shows that it always manipulates the truth and politicizes major issues,” Yin said. “Instead of lying and manipulating, the DPP should focus its attention on other major issues and explain its global strategies for the economy and trade rather than adopting anti-China and anti-US stances.”
The DPP has accused President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of trying to shift responsibility for the beef issue to the former DPP administration and said Ma should apologize for lying about having no timetable or a predetermined stance on US beef.
Ma, on his Facebook page, reiterated yesterday the importance for the nation to address the US beef import issue to facilitate bilateral talks between Taiwan and the US over the stalled Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) , and warned that the signing of a free-trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and the US highlighted the urgency for Taiwan to speed up participation in regional economic integration.
“The US-South Korea FTA is a warning sign for us. It highlights the importance for Taiwan to speed up the process of economic transformation, and we must make major breakthroughs and strive for better economic performance,” he wrote.
Signing FTAs or economic pacts with major trading partners and getting involved in regional economic integration have been long-term goals of the government, Ma added.
“The lack of progress on US beef imports, however, has stalled the TIFA negotiations for five years. For the sake of economic transformation and the improvement of Taiwan-US relations, we must solve the issue as soon as possible,” Ma said, emphasizing the importance of creating opportunities and making efforts to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade regime within the next 10 years.
Separately yesterday, the DPP urged the Ma administration not to govern using the campaign-style tactic of mudslinging and shirking its responsibility now that the presidential election has passed.
DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said if Ma had the public’s health in mind, he should first prove that animal feed additives are harmless.
“While the president has said the resumption of the TIFA negotiations were stalled for five years because of the then-DPP administration’s failure to lift the ban, it appears that Ma has forgotten who has been governing the country for the past four years,” Lin added.
Additional reporting by Chris Wang
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift