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.
Seven of the 17 NT$10 million (US$311,604) winning receipts from the November-December uniform invoice lottery remain unclaimed as of today, the Ministry of Finance said, urging winners to redeem their prizes by May 5. The reminder comes ahead of the release of the winning numbers for the January-February lottery tomorrow. Among the unclaimed receipts was one for a NT$173 phone bill in Keelung, while others were for a NT$5,913 purchase at Costco in Taipei's Neihu District (內湖), a NT$49 purchase at a FamilyMart in New Taipei City's Tamsui District (淡水), and a NT$500 purchase at a tea shop in New Taipei City's
Taiwanese officials were shown the first of 66 F-16V fighter jets purchased by Taiwan from the United States, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday, adding the aircraft has completed an initial flight test and is expected to be delivered later this year. A delegation led by Deputy Minister of National Defense Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) visited Lockheed Martin’s F-16 C/D Block 70 (also known as F-16V) assembly line in South Carolina on March 16 to view the aircraft. The jet will undergo a final acceptance flight in the US before being delivered to Taiwan, the
The New Taipei Metro's Sanyin Line and the eastern extension of the Taipei Metro's Tamsui-Xinyi Line (Red Line) are scheduled to begin operations in June, the National Development Council said today. The Red Line, which terminates at Xiangshan Station, would be connected by the 1.4km extension to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, while the Sanyin Line would link New Taipei City's Tucheng and Yingge stations via Sanxia District (三峽). The council gave the updates at a council meeting reviewing progress on public construction projects for this year. Taiwan's annual public infrastructure budget would remain at NT$800 billion (US$25.08 billion), with NT$97.3
Deliveries of delayed F-16V jets are expected to begin in September, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said today, after senior defense officials visited the US last week. The US in 2019 approved a US$8 billion sale of Lockheed Martin F-16 jets to Taiwan, a deal that would take the nation’s F-16 fleet to more than 200 jets, but the project has been hit by issues including software problems. Koo appeared today before a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, which is discussing different versions of the special defense budget this week. The committee is questioning officials today,
RSS