A senior Chinese official said that China will continue to honor its agreements with Taiwan, but ruled out any new accords unless Beijing’s conditions are met.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) arrived in Hangzhou, China, on Wednesday for a meeting with the heads of nine Taiwanese business associations in Zhejiang Province.
At the meeting, Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland executive vice president Hsieh Chih-tung (謝智通) told Zhang about the difficulties facing Taiwanese businesses that specialize in machinery, equipment and other fields, and expressed concern that China would reduce its preferential policies for Taiwanese businesses.
Zhang said that although talks between Taipei and Beijing have been suspended since January, Taiwanese businesses need not worry, because China will keep its promises and continue to honor the 23 agreements that the two sides have signed since 2008, according to people who attended the meeting.
The agreements were negotiated over 11 rounds of talks between the Taipei-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS). They are the semi-official organizations charged with the conduct of cross-strait relations in the absence of official ties.
However, regarding follow-up agreements according to the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement of 2010, Zhang was quoted as saying that “it is impossible for the doors to be open without the [so-called] ‘1992 consensus’ as a foundation.”
Talks between the SEF and ARATS have stopped because without a common political foundation based on the “1992 consensus,” China is uncertain whether it is negotiating with “a foreign country,” he said.
If Taiwan does not recognize the “1992 consensus,” official communication channels cannot be resumed even through another channel, Zhang added.
As a precondition for continued development in cross-strait ties, Beijing has insisted that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government accept the “1992 consensus,” which refers to a supposed understanding reached during the cross-strait talks in 1992 that both Taiwan and China acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.
The DPP rejects the existence of the “1992 consensus.”
Former KMT lawmaker Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 said that he had made up the term in 2000, when he was head of the Mainland Affairs Council, before the KMT handed power to the DPP.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
Travel agencies in Taiwan are working to secure alternative flights for travelers bound for New Zealand for the Lunar New Year holiday, as Air New Zealand workers are set to strike next week. The airline said that it has confirmed that the planned industrial action by its international wide-body cabin crew would go ahead on Thursday and Friday next week. While the Auckland-based carrier pledged to take reasonable measures to mitigate the impact of the workers’ strike, an Air New Zealand flight arriving at Taipei from Auckland on Thursday and another flight departing from Taipei for Auckland on Saturday would have to
RSS