The Presidential Office yesterday issued a statement saying Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) proposal to merely establish a communication channel with China would “set cross-strait ties back by 10,000 steps.”
Presidential Office spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) — in a statement that is about 2,000 words long — criticized the policies Tsai mentioned in her closing remarks at Saturday’s televised presidential debate as “preposterous” and “indicative of the DPP chairperson’s unawareness of where and in what year she was in.”
Tsai on Saturday said that she would push for reforms and national unity by establishing four mechanisms, including one that would serve as a communication channel through which Taiwan could forge mutual understanding with China and other nations.
The other three mechanisms would be facilitate cross-party negotiations, industrial adjustments and pension reforms, Tsai said.
“Under President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) term in office over the past seven-and-a-half years, dramatic progresses have been made in the institutionalization of cross-strait communications,” Chen said.
Only 22 days after Ma took office in 2008, Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) resumed their institutionalized negotiations after a 10-year hiatus, Chen said.
Also, 11 meetings and 23 cross-strait agreements have been made between SEF and ARATS under Ma’s governance, as well as seven meetings between the heads of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council and China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, where they addressed each other by their official titles, he said.
“Ma’s achievements in cross-strait relations culminated on Nov. 7 last year in a landmark meeting between Ma and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore, which drew global attention and worldwide recognition,” Chen said.
A telephone hotline connecting Taiwan’s and China’s heads of cross-strait affairs on Wednesday came into effect, fulfilling one of the agreements reached at the Ma-Xi meeting, he said.
“We have never thought chairperson Tsai was planning to take 10,000 steps back in cross-strait relations, as evidenced by her proposal that shows she only intends to create a communication channel with China,” Chen said.
He suspected that if elected president, Tsai would close all official cross-strait communication channels and establish one outside the system, Chen said.
Such an approach could result in cross-strait ties being returned to their levels in 2000, when exchanges between both sides of the Taiwan Strait were suspended and direct flights across the straight were few, Chen said.
“Chairperson Tsai, if you set cross-strait relations back after the Jan. 16 elections, how could you ever deliver your campaign promise to maintain the ‘status quo’?” Chen asked.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
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