A summit between top leaders from Taiwan and China this year could be the No. 1 highlight in the development of relations between the two sides, said a Chinese expert on Taiwan affairs, who added that a meeting’s likelihood was “increasing ceaselessly.”
Ni Yongjie (倪永傑), deputy director of the Shanghai-based Institute of Taiwan Studies, made his forecast in an article on Tuesday, which was carried by Beijing media.
The forecast came on the heels of a statement by Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) that this year’s APEC leaders’ meeting in China would be an “appropriate occasion” for such a meeting.
In spite of Taiwan’s insistence that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would have to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in his capacity as president of the Republic of China, Ni said it would be “most natural” for Ma to meet Xi as chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), or as the top leader of the Taiwan region.
When they do meet, the two can call each other “brother” — “Brother Ying-jeou” and “Brother Jinping” — as a way of demonstrating the closeness of the relationship between the people of Taiwan and China under the principle that “blood is thicker than water,” Ni added.
Assuming it occurs, the meeting would be a “historic event that shakes the world, that changes cross-strait relations, that changes China and even influences the entire world,” Ni said.
Ni said there would be “four highlights” for cross-strait ties this year, with the Ma-Xi meeting ranked first. Second on the list was a scheduled meeting between Wang and Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), which Ni said would herald “major political interactions between Taiwan and China.”
Ni said Wang and Zhang would likely broach a Ma-Xi meeting, though Wang has denied that the subject would be on the agenda.
The third highlight predicted by Ni was the establishment of a China office by the Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation and one in Taiwan by the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
RSS