A coalition of pro-independence groups yesterday expressed outrage over Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu’s (韓國瑜) visit to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and liaison office in Hong Kong.
“China’s liaison office is a place where every chief executive of Hong Kong must report to after their election and Han’s visit was apparently meant to show support for China’s ‘one country, two systems’ proposal,” Asia University student Hsieh Hai-ching (謝海菁) said at a protest outside the Legislative Yuan in Tapei.
By offering to serve as a promoter for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Han is probably hoping to become president with the party’s help, she said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“Young people are very worried that Han might be elected president, because that could cause Taiwan to suffer the same fate as Hong Kong and undergo a series of sovereignty crises,” she said.
Han and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must not “sell out” Taiwan, she added.
The protest, organized by the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan and more than a dozen student groups, drew about 30 people to Jinan Road, many of them holding placards that read “Say no to ‘one country, two systems’” and “China would give neither bread nor freedom.”
“With Chinese President Xi Jingping (習近平) clearly set on promoting ‘the great revival of the Chinese people,’ I find it anachronistic and unbelievable that certain people in Taiwan are backing the ‘1992 consensus’ and ‘one country, two systems,’ or proposing a peace treaty,” Sunflower movement leader Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) said.
He urged Han to explain when he returns home today what he had negotiated with the CCP while in China and called for the government to boost national security against Chinese infiltration.
Han last week led a 28-member delegation on a visit to Hong Kong, Macau and Shenzhen and Xiamen to promote trade.
While in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, he met with Chinese Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Director Wang Zhimin (王志民) and Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Liu Jieyi (劉結一) respectively.
Han is scheduled to return to Kaohsiung this morning.
The so-called “1992 consensus” — a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted making up in 2000 — refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the CCP that both sides acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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