Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) said yesterday that the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in the East China Sea are inherent territory of the Republic of China and added that the government “will not back down on any sovereignty issue.”
Lin’s remarks came after tensions in the region escalated after US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talked about Washington’s policy toward the island group in a Jan. 18 news conference.
Clinton said the US does not have a position on the ultimate sovereignty of the islands, known as the Senkakus in Japan, but acknowledges that they are under Tokyo’s administration and opposes “any unilateral actions that would seek to undermine Japanese administration.”
Lin made it clear that sovereignty is different to administrative control over a territory.
He added that Clinton also said that the US wants to see “China and Japan resolve this matter peacefully through dialogue,” indicating that the US acknowledges the existence of disputes over the island group and that it wishes for regional peace and stability, which is in line with the wishes of Taiwan.
As for Japan’s administrative control over the Diaoyutais, Lin said Taiwan wishes to conduct negotiations with Japan over fishing rights in the disputed area. He said his ministry is still working on a second round of preparatory fishery talks with Japan, adding that no timetable has been set for the next preparatory meeting.
In November last year Taiwan and Japan held a preparatory meeting to discuss a resumption of formal talks to address the issue of fishing rights in the waters surrounding the Diaoyutais. Taiwan and Japan last held talks on fishing rights in their overlapping territories in 2009, but the discussions have been stalled since then.
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:
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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