Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should seek legislative approval before agreeing to any meeting with China’s leaders, New Power Party (NPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said yesterday.
“If President Tsai in the future wants to meet with leaders of the People’s Republic of China, our expectation is that she has to report on the purpose and content of the trip and get approval from the legislature and the public before going,” Huang said.
“Prior to the [President] Ma [Ying-jeou (馬英九)]-[Chinese President] Xi [Jinping (習近平)] meeting, we already made our position very clear: We do not oppose a meeting between leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but there has to be civic supervision before any meeting takes place,” Huang said.
The Ma-Xi meeting took place in November last year in Singapore.
He slammed reports that Ma had agreed to meet with Xi after Beijing sent him a message saying the meeting was an “opportunity which might never come again.”
Huang said that any decision to hold such a high-level meeting should be based on what would be discussed and how it would benefit Taiwan, rather than on “cryptic remarks” by Beijing.
“The Ma-Xi meeting might have been useful to [Beijing] because they caused President Ma to make a fool of himself by going to Singapore to accept the ‘one China’ principle, but it had a huge negative impact on Taiwan’s international status,” he said.
He said that the NPP would look closely at the reason for any proposed meeting before giving its support, citing discussion of a schedule for removing missiles targeting Taiwan, revisions to China’s “Anti-Secession” Law (反分裂國家法) or other “concrete” goodwill measures as reasons that would win the party’s approval for a meeting.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
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