The more than 1,100 Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan are less of an impediment to a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) than whether talks would be backed by the people in Taiwan, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said.
Any meeting would be contingent on Ma being present in his capacity as president of the Republic of China, he said in an interview at his office in Taipei on Thursday. While not ruling out an engagement with Xi before the end of his term in 2016, Ma said conditions are not yet ripe.
“The most important factors are whether the country needs it, whether the people support it, that we can meet with dignity — those are the things that will make it possible,” Ma said of a meeting with Xi. “There are conditions yet to be created.”
For Ma, who has seen his popularity slide since his re-election last year, the challenge is to balance his drive for improved relations with China with concerns in Taiwan that closer ties will lead China to dominate its smaller, democratic neighbor.
Ma, 63, said that many of those concerns were misplaced, with some in 2010 having derided the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement to reduce barriers with China as “sugar-coated poison.”
Taiwan will maintain curbs on the inflow of Chinese workers and restrict investments in sensitive industries, he said.
Ma saw his personal disapproval rating rise to 70 percent in May in a poll by Taipei-based cable news network TVBS.
Ma may need more time before a Xi meeting as “there has always been concern that he is going to sell Taiwan to China,” said Peter Kurz, Citigroup’s Taipei-based head of research. “From my standpoint it would be a very positive development. To any extent that there is reduction in cross-strait tension and political risk, it is positive.”
The opposition would not support Ma meeting Xi if he was presented as chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rather than Taiwan’s president, said Liao Da-chi (廖達琪), director of National Sun Yat-sen University’s Institute of Political Science.
“China won’t accept Ma as a president making a meeting in the remainder of his term difficult,” Liao said.
Under the Ma administration’s closer economic ties with China, Chinese tourists spent NT$292.6 billion (US$9.8 billion) in Taiwan from 2008 till June 30 this year. Last year, more than 2 million Chinese tourists visited, making up 43 percent of leisure visitors.
“Since 2003, China has been our biggest trade partner and export market,” Ma said. “More and more people can see that liberalization is a path Taiwan must take.”
Ma said Taiwan hopes to conclude a trade-in-goods pact with China by the end of this year.
By the end of last year, there were more than 1,100 short-range ballistic missiles targeting Taiwan from China, according to the US Department of Defense’s annual report to Congress.
Ma said the removal of those would not mean much militarily as the projectiles are mobile and could just as quickly be brought back.
It’s China’s refusal to accept Ma as a sovereign leader and meet him on those grounds that is an obstacle to talks.
“Our relationship with mainland China is very subtle. We don’t have a state-to-state relationship and we do not view mainland China as a foreign state,” Ma said.
However, under the ROC Constitution, “we are of course a sovereign nation,” he said.
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is
FINAL COUNTDOWN: About 50,000 attended a pro-recall rally yesterday, while the KMT and the TPP plan to rally against the recall votes today Democracy activists, together with arts and education representatives, yesterday organized a motorcade, while thousands gathered on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei in the evening in support of tomorrow’s recall votes. Recall votes for 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu City mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) are to be held tomorrow, while recall votes for seven other KMT lawmakers are scheduled for Aug. 23. The afternoon motorcade was led by the Spring Breeze Culture and Arts Foundation, the Tyzen Hsiao Foundation and the Friends of Lee Teng-hui Association, and was joined by delegates from the Taiwan Statebuilding Party and the Taiwan Solidarity
An SOS message in a bottle has been found in Ireland that is believed to have come from the Taiwanese captain of fishing vessel Yong Yu Sing No. 18 (永裕興18號), who has been missing without a trace for over four years, along with nine Indonesian crew members. The vessel, registered to Suao (蘇澳), went missing near Hawaii on Dec. 30, 2020. The ship has since been recovered, but the 10 crew members have never been found. The captain, surnamed Lee (李), is believed to have signed the note with his name. A post appeared on Reddit on Tuesday after a man
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked