The US wants to know the cross-strait aims of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration in its remaining months in office, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) told a news conference in Washington on Wednesday.
Speaking at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office on the last day of a visit to Washington, Hsia said he told the US that institutionalized cross-strait negotiations would continue through the Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS).
He said the US had expressed concern about two cross-strait ideas raised by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presumptive presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱): “one China, same interpretation” and signing a cross-strait peace agreement.
There had also been some concern about Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) stance on cross-strait relations, which some felt was not clear enough, Hsia said.
He said that the US is also attentive to how China views January’s presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan, and hopes that the “status quo” of cross-strait peace, stability and prosperity would continue and not be hindered by the elections.
He told reporters that he is scheduled to meet with China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) in China in September.
“Agreements concerning taxation, flight safety and Chinese passengers’ transit in Taiwan are expected to be signed during the SEF-ARATS negotiations in August,” Hsia said.
Negotiations on an agreement on trade in goods, as well as issues on dispute resolution, will continue, while ecological concerns such as environmental protection and fish farming will be put on the table for the first time, he added.
When asked how negotiations could continue when a bill to establish a mechanism to oversee cross-strait agreements has not been passed by the legislature, Hsia said the 21 agreements inked so far have all been signed in accordance with the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).
Since the oversight bill remains stalled in the legislature, the council is simply following precedents in cross-strait affairs, he said.
“The Executive Yuan is doing its job, which is to exert pressure on the Legislative Yuan to take action when the signed agreements are later referred to the legislature,” he said.
Hsia also said that cross-strait communications had not been disrupted by former MAC deputy minister Chang Hsien-yao’s (張顯耀) resignation in August last year and the ensuing scandal about espionage allegations, which were subsequently dismissed.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
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Almost a quarter of volunteer soldiers who signed up from 2021 to last year have sought early discharge, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said in a report. The report said that 12,884 of 52,674 people who volunteered in the period had sought an early exit from the military, returning NT$895.96 million (US$28.86 million) to the government. In 2021, there was a 105.34 percent rise in the volunteer recruitment rate, but the number has steadily declined since then, missing recruitment targets, the Chinese-language United Daily News said, citing the report. In 2021, only 521 volunteers dropped out of the military, the report said, citing
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