Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani on Tuesday said that his nation is aligned with the EU and NATO in opposing changes to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, after China announced a diplomatic trip to Rome.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday said that Wang Yi (王毅), director of the Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission, would be visiting France, Italy, Hungary and Russia from Tuesday to Wednesday next week.
He is also scheduled to speak at the Munich Security Conference in Germany this weekend, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is likely to attend.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It is Wang’s first overseas trip since assuming China’s top diplomatic position on Jan. 1, following a decade as minister of foreign affairs from 2013 to last year.
Speaking at a forum at Libera Universita Internazionale degli Studi Sociali in Rome on Tuesday, Tajani confirmed that Wang would visit Italy next week, Italian news site Le Formiche reported.
Tajani then issued a message to China, saying that “the status quo must be maintained in the Indo-Pacific; we are committed to this with NATO and the EU.”
“Taipei must remain as it is,” the report quoted him as saying, an apparent reference to China’s aim of unification with Taiwan.
“There must be no temptation to do elsewhere what Russia has done in Ukraine,” he added.
The issue was also raised in a meeting in December last year between Tajani and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, when they declared their “opposition to unilateral efforts to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” a US press release at the time said.
In an interview with Le Formiche on Saturday, Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Maria Tripodi said that China “is an issue on the global political agenda.”
“China has progressively tightened its grip on Taiwan through exercises in the neighboring air and sea space,” Tripodi said. “Combined with increasing investments in the Pacific area, penetrating into European ports and the Horn of Africa, all of this cannot but generate concern in neighboring countries.”
Wang likely has two goals in visiting Rome next week, Le Formiche reported.
The first is to set the groundwork for a potential visit to Beijing by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was invited by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia in November last year, it said.
Wang is also likely to pursue the extension of a Belt and Road Initiative agreement with Italy, which is to expire in March next year, it said.
If no action is taken by either side by the end of this year, the agreement is to renew automatically.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US