In an interview published yesterday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said that he has been highly active in developing cross-relations since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) assumed his post last year, adding that he believes that the upcoming APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting would be a suitable occasion for a meeting between him and Xi.
However, since Beijing remains reserved about the prospect of such a summit, the government has no concrete plan for it, Ma said in response to media queries in an interview in Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun.
In the interview, Ma discussed a range of issues, such as the cross-strait service trade agreement and the nation’s economic and trade development.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
The president said that when Xi met former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) at last year’s APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, the Chinese leader went beyond reiterating Beijing’s standard position on the importance of promoting the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.
According to Ma, Xi said then that in the “long term,” the political differences between the two sides must be resolved so they are not passed on from generation to generation.
The government’s stance toward interactions with China has been and remains: “First the urgent, then the gradual; first the easy, then the difficult; first economics, then politics,” Ma said.
Ma made headlines on a separate occasion yesterday, when, while on a visit to an Aboriginal Rukai village in Pingtung County’s Sandimen Township (三地門) he was rejected by an elderly woman after asking her for a kiss.
The episode took place at an event in the township’s Chingye Village (青葉) held to commemorate Rukai elder Peng Yu-mei’s (彭玉梅) 112th birthday.
When the president took her by the hands and asked if he could kiss her on the cheek, Peng turned him down, saying that “no other man aside from my husband has ever touched my body,” drawing a bit of embarrassed laughter from Ma and the other guests.
After being spurned, Ma presented Peng with gifts that included a red envelope, ornamental items, a presidential watch and red tea.
Peng was born in 1903 and has witnessed multiple changes of government through her lifetime, she said.
She has a big family, with more than 100 members spanning across six generations, she added.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods