President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is to visit three of the nation’s diplomatic allies in the Pacific from Oct. 28 to Nov. 4, the Presidential Office said yesterday.
The president is to visit the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Wu Chih-chung (吳志中) said at a Presidential Office news conference.
Tsai is to meet with senior officials of the three countries during her eight-day trip to promote bilateral ties, Wu said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Six of Taiwan’s 20 formal diplomatic allies are in the Pacific, the other three being Nauru, Kiribati and Palau.
In other news, Tsai yesterday said that the government would like the US and Japan to support its New Southbound Policy, which promotes cooperation in trade, infrastructure, investment and education between Taiwan and the policy’s target countries.
Tsai made the remark at the Presidential Office Building while receiving a group of foreign academics, who had attended the Yushan Forum on Wednesday and Thursday.
“The key for Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy to succeed is positive responses from our neighboring countries and the international community,” she said.
As the New Southbound Policy is aimed at “redefining Taiwan’s role in Southeast Asia and South Asia, our nation is committed to expanding opportunities with other like-minded nations in the New Southbound Policy target countries,” Tsai said.
Taiwan might be China’s next target after it has “walled off” Hong Kong from the rest of the world with its new national security legislation, Academia Sinica Institute of Sociology fellow Wu Jieh-min (吳介民) said on Thursday. At a seminar organized by the Economic Democracy Union, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Hong Kong Outlanders and the Judicial Reform Foundation, Wu said that the legislation is simultaneously a fig leaf concealing Beijing’s autocratic rule in Hong Kong and a figurative “Berlin Wall,” denying democratic countries access to Hong Kong. Wu said it is evident that Taiwan would be China’s next target. The
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Taiwan is the second-safest country in the world, after Qatar, according to visitors to an online database, who voted on 133 countries and territories worldwide. In online database Numbeo’s Crime Index by Country 2020 Mid-Year survey, Taiwan scored 84.74 out of 100 for safety. That score put Taiwan in second place, followed by the United Arab Emirates with 84.55 and Georgia with 79.50. The top ranked country, Qatar, had a safety score of 88.10. Numbeo said that the results were based on surveys of visitors to its Web site who were asked to rate the safety and overall level of crime
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