President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Wednesday said that the “checkbook diplomacy” Taiwan was once criticized for has long been a thing of the past.
“Checkbook diplomacy, in its conventional definition, ended a long time ago, and no longer exists,” Tsai said when asked by reporters if she would make her stance clear to avoid being criticized.
Taiwan has become a very different nation, and many things need to meet regulatory requirements and be examined by the legislature, so it should no longer be an issue, the president said.
There might have been some diplomatic practices that faced criticism in the past, when the nation was in a difficult situation, she told reporters traveling with her on her first overseas trip since taking office.
Citing Paraguay as an example, Tsai said she announced only two new policies during her visit — one being the doubling to 28 of the number of students to be admitted to a scholarship program to study in Taiwan, the other being further raising import quotas for beef from the South American country.
“If I did not tell you about any other issues, that means there is nothing to tell,” she said.
The president also commented on responses to events during her visit to the country, where she attended the opening of the expanded Panama Canal, before traveling to Paraguay.
She said Panama had already informed her that the first ship to sail through the expanded canal is owned by Beijing-based China Ocean Shipping Co, and added that the Central American ally handled the matter in an honest and mature manner.
“[Panama] invited me and also invited the leader of mainland China. They [Panama] expressed their concern about relations across the Taiwan Strait, and expressed the hope that they can do something to help maintain peace and stability between the two sides,” she said.
She also said there is no need for a political interpretation of her signing “President of Taiwan (ROC)” [Republic of China] in a visitor’s book on Sunday during a tour of the expanded Panama Canal.
The choice of signature was blasted by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and several other KMT politicians, who said ROC should have come first, followed by Taiwan in the parentheses.
“I was elected by the 23 million people of this country, so it is not inappropriate to call myself president of Taiwan,” Tsai said, adding that on formal occasions, it is clear that the ROC will be listed before Taiwan.
Earlier that day, Tsai witnessed a donation by the Asus Foundation of 400 laptops and tablets to public elementary schools in Paraguay, before attending a banquet hosted by Asociacion Rural del Paraguay, where she was joined by Paraguayan Vice President Juan Eudes Afara Maciel.
She visited an animal feed factory, and attended the opening ceremony of an orchid sales center, both of which are part of a cooperation program between Taiwan and Paraguay.
The president was scheduled to wrap up her visit yesterday and fly to Los Angeles for a transit stop on her way home.
BILINGUAL ASSISTANCE: The center launched a chat bot that features Chinese and English interfaces to provide foreigners with instant information about the pandemic The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said that it would discuss with other nations the possibility of allowing businesspeople to visit on a case-by-case basis. Asked about loosening border restrictions, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said at the daily CECC news briefing that while the center is cautious about opening the nation’s borders, it would aim to diminish obstacles for important trade interactions without risking transmission of the novel coronavirus. Several foreign representatives in Taiwan have expressed an interest in the matter and the center would conduct related negotiations with the help of the
DELUSIONAL: The male patient said he did not know that the woman had mental problems, but the court said that her being restrained in isolation should have given him pause The Taiwan High Court has ordered the Jhudong branch of the Taiwan National University Hospital and a male patient to jointly pay a former female patient’s family NT$400,000 in compensation after the man had sex with the woman, who has mental problems, while hospitalized. The 26-year-old woman has been diagnosed with a mental disorder, a symptom of which is that she obsessively seeks to have sex, her mother said. The mother filed a formal complaint and sought damages from the hospital and the male patient surnamed Chen (陳) after finding out that her daughter had sex with the man while
The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) should not use the government’s disease-prevention policy as an excuse to block people’s access to the Taipei Railway Station’s main hall, the Taiwan International Workers’ Association said yesterday. The association held a protest at the station after what organizers said were about 400 people staged a sit-in on Saturday to demonstrate against the TRA’s proposal to ban sitting on the floor of the main hall. In accordance with the Central Epidemic Command Center’s disease-prevention measures, large gatherings have been banned in the hall since the end of February. After protesters yesterday expressed their grievances at the southern
Nematode-trapping fungi have been found to be natural killers of nematodes and their mechanisms might facilitate the development of new drugs or biological control agents, an Academia Sinica researcher said yesterday. Mostly measuring less than 1mm, nematodes are found in soil worldwide and most are not visible to the naked eye, Academia Sinica Institute of Molecular Biology assistant research fellow Hsueh Yen-ping (薛雁冰) told a news conference in Taipei. Some nematodes can cause infections in humans or damage plants, but existing pesticides, such as ivermectin, aldicarb and levamisole, can only inhibit their activity and the poisons’ efficacy are declining due to
RSS