President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should revise her China policy and acknowledge the so-called “1992 consensus” if she wants to keep Taiwan from losing more diplomatic allies and stimulate economic growth, the Taiwan Competitiveness Forum said yesterday.
Tsai refuses to accept the “1992 consensus” and therefore failed Beijing’s “test” of her stance on cross-strait relations, setting off a domino effect, with Panama cutting its diplomatic ties after Sao Tome and Principe severed official exchanges with Taipei last year, said Hsieh Ming-hui (謝明輝), chief executive of the academic think tank known for its pro-unification stance.
The “1992 consensus” — a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted making up in 2000 — refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese government that both sides acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
The US has entered a honeymoon period with Beijing, Hsieh said, calling on Tsai to also adjust her China policy to avoid the continued sidelining of Taiwan by the international community.
Hsieh said Tsai’s “new situation, new questionnaire, new model” perspective on cross-strait relations is “hollow.”
However, he praised Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) for saying he feels an “affinity toward China and he loves Taiwan,” and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming’s (柯建銘) proposal to remove portions in the DPP’s charter advocating Taiwanese independence.
Nations skeptical of China’s “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure development initiative have either joined or agreed to cooperate with the China-led investment plan, he said, urging the Tsai administration not to adopt a quixotic mind-set by attempting to antagonize the initiative with its “new southbound policy.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching