Taipei City Government spokesman Liu Yi-ting (劉奕霆) yesterday rejected a report that a twin-city forum with Shanghai would not be held in Taipei this year.
Chinese-language magazine Mirror Media this week quoted an anonymous source who is purportedly close to Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) as saying it is certain that the twin-city forum would not be held in Taipei this year.
The city government wants to avoid the possibility of the forum becoming a stage for the campaigns of candidates in November’s local elections and wants to avoid worsening cross-strait relations, the magazine quoted the source as saying.
As many pan-green groups have criticized Ko for his remark at last year’s forum that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family” and the Democratic Progressive Party has yet to decide whether to support Ko in his re-election bid, the Ko administration feels that holding the controversial forum in Taipei might cause even more disturbances, the magazine said.
After the city government reached a consensus with the Shanghai Municipal Taiwan Affairs Office, it informed the central government about not holding the forum in Taipei, which is an attitude also held by the Mainland Affairs Council and the National Police Agency on the issue, it added.
The city government has not publicized any information about a decision not to hold the forum, Liu said, adding that “the two cities’ officials are still negotiating the issue, so there is no decision to not hold or suspend the forum.”
The city government laments and condemns that the media reported the story without confirming the facts in advance, he said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift