The Executive Yuan yesterday criticized Beijing for reportedly planning to merge its office charged with cross-strait ties with the agency responsible for Hong Kong and Macau affairs, saying that it is yet another attempt to belittle Taiwan.
“Unlike Hong Kong and Macau, Taiwan is an independent, sovereign state, a fact that China has tried to undermine by putting the three together in the same sentence,” Cabinet spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said in response to reporters’ questions on the sidelines of a forum in Taipei.
The reported merger was Beijing’s way of blatantly undercutting Taipei, Hsu said.
Photo: CNA
Citing an anonymous source, the Hong Kong-based Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao on Friday reported that China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office is to merge with China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) as part of the Chinese State Council’s proposed reorganization that is to cut the number of Cabinet-level departments from 25 to 19.
The report also said that the semi-governmental Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits is slated to be incorporated into a new association tasked with handling “overseas Chinese compatriots.”
When reached by reporters yesterday, the Mainland Affairs Council — the TAO’s Taiwanese counterpart — said it would not comment on the Chinese government’s rearrangement, but would keep a close eye on it.
“We have noticed that there are various opinions and expectations regarding Hong Kong’s future. The government has never intended to, nor will it ever actively intervene in Hong Kong’s internal affairs,” council Deputy Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said.
It is the government’s hope that various sectors of Hong Kong, its government and Beijing could seek a consensus on the territory’s development rationally and peacefully, Chiu said.
Beijing has in recent years undergone several government organizational mergers and reforms in a bid to solve the problems of overlapping functions and poor cooperation between different branches, Chiu said.
The issue is expected to be discussed and finalized in the first session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing tomorrow, he added.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS