Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) yesterday said the dispute over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) was about fishing rights rather than a sovereignty issue and that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent proposal was “thoughtless.”
“This has always been an issue of fishing rights. It is not a sovereignty issue,” Lee said during a question-and-answer session on the second day of his three-day visit to central Taiwan.
Asked by reporters about Ma’s proposal to resolve the controversy in two stages — which calls for holding three sets of bilateral dialogues between Taiwan, Japan and China, before holding a three-party talk — Lee said “no one in the international community would buy into the initiative.”
Photo: Liao Yao-tung, Taipei Times
The 89-year-old, who had publicly said that Japan has sovereignty over the Diaoyutais, sidestepped the question of sovereignty, saying that the Japanese government’s nationalization of the islets “was a business transaction between its government and citizens that has nothing to do with Taiwan.”
He urged the government to focus on finding a resolution to fishing rights, which he said was a more important task because it involved the livelihood of fishermen in Yilan County.
The Diaoyutais have been the fishing ground of Taiwanese fishermen since the Japanese colonial period, Lee said.
Since Taiwan and Japan have failed to reach a consensus after 16 consultative meetings on fishing rights over the years, Lee suggested having fishermen’s associations from both sides work out a solution on their own.
Lee said it would be unwise and inappropriate for the government to intentionally or unintentionally ignore a faltering domestic economy and spend too much attention on the Diaoyutais controversy.
“I really don’t think that ordinary people care about the islets,” Lee told reporters at Lugu Township (鹿谷), Nantou County.
The former president was visiting various areas in Nantou County and Greater Taichung that were hit by the 921 Earthquake, a magnitude 7.6 quake that killed more than 2,400 people 13 years ago this month.
Turning to other issues, the former president said a recent massive protest staged by Hong Kong residents against the government’s plan to introduce patriotism classes showed that Beijing’s “one country, two systems” model was a failure in the special administrative region.
“No one would trust that mechanism anymore,” he said.
In response to a question about the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) “ill-gotten” assets, Lee, a former KMT chairman, said that the party should donate its assets to the government to promote fair competition between political parties.
There has been a mechanism in place to subsidize political parties in Taiwan, which is why parties should no longer possess party assets.
Lee is scheduled to conclude his trip and return to Taipei today.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening 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) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS