Neither the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nor Beijing came out as a winner in the just-concluded visit of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), panelists said in a symposium in Taipei yesterday.
Reviewing the first visit by a Chinese minister to Taiwan in more than six decades, which was dogged by protests during its four days, panelists told the forum organized by the pro-independence Taiwan Brain Trust that the trip was only a “publicity drive” for Zhang, with the Taiwanese government sidelined.
While Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) and Zhang reportedly had reached consensus on humanitarian visits after the establishment of representative offices across the Taiwan Strait, as well as on a joint-study for Taiwan’s participation in regional economic integration during their meeting, public attention was mostly focused on the protests, which eventually forced the TAO and the MAC to cancel three events on Zhang’s last day in Taiwan.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
“It was intriguing that both sides did not vigorously promote the results, which made it seem to me that there was no substantial agenda for the meeting in the first place,” said Tung Li-wen (董立文), a professor at the Central Police University’s Graduate School of Public Security.
The role of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration during the trip was diminished and whether it could deliver on their agreement, remained a question, Tung said.
With regards to Beijing, Tung said the cancellation of almost the entire itinerary on Saturday was “the biggest setback,” as it showed Beijing’s fragility in bilateral engagement and inspired the protesters that their demonstrations had been a success.
However, the negative outcome of the visit for the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party did not benefit the DPP, said TBT founder Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏), a senior Taiwan independence advocate.
There was no problem with the DPP welcoming Zhang’s visit, since the institutionalization of official bilateral dialogue is recognized by all parties, but the DPP failed to clearly and strongly express its opposition to Beijing’s recent remarks about Taiwan’s future, Koo said.
TAO spokesperson Fan Liqing’s (范麗青) recent comment that Taiwan’s future should be decided by “all Chinese people” has drawn strong opposition in Taiwan.
“It begged the question why Zhang insisted on visiting Taiwan at this moment because [his visit] would only create more problems than positive results,” Koo said.
He said he was “even surprised” at Beijing’s insistence on sending Zhang to Taiwan right after the controversial remarks because that was considered a provocative move by many Taiwanese.
The Sunflower movement and the recent protests showed that Beijing has failed in its intelligence gathering in Taiwan because it did not have a clue what was on the minds of Taiwanese, Koo said.
“Perhaps that was because all the TAO said in its reports to the Zhongnanhai during the past 30 years was how successful its Taiwan campaign has been and that everything was under control,” Koo said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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