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.
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’: A man watching Taiwanese military drills said that there would be nothing anyone could do if the situation escalates in the Taiwan Strait Many people in Taiwan look upon China’s military exercises over the past week with calm resignation, doubting that war is imminent and if anything, feeling pride in their nation’s determination to defend itself. After a visit to Taiwan last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has sent ships and aircraft across an unofficial buffer between Taiwan and China’s coast and missiles over Taipei and into waters surrounding the nation since Thursday last week. However, Rosa Chang, proudly watching her son take part in Taiwanese military exercises that included dozens of howitzers firing shells into the Taiwan Strait off
RSS