Taiwan will appeal to the international community to stop China from misrepresenting UN Resolution 2758 when the UN General Assembly meets later this month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.
The ministry made the remarks at a news conference in Taipei on its objectives to promote Taiwan’s inclusion in the world body.
The 79th UN General Assembly is to open on Tuesday next week at its headquarters in New York. The assembly is to hold its general debate from Sept. 24 to 28, focusing on the theme: “Leaving no one behind: Acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development and human dignity for present and future,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said.
Photo: CNA
Ironically, Taiwan’s 23.5 million people have continuously been left behind by the UN, Tien said.
“The reason for this injustice is because China has maliciously twisted the content of UN Resolution 2758, with the intention of misleading the international community to equate the resolution with its so-called ‘one China’ principle,” he said.
“China falsely claims that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and has authorized the PRC to represent it,” he added. “Such a claim negates the fact that the Republic of China (Taiwan) is a sovereign nation and has legitimate rights to be part of the UN.”
Asked why Taiwan is focused on explaining Resolution 2758 this year, Tien said that Nauru cited the resolution when it broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan earlier this year.
The island country said its decision was made “on the grounds of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 and the ‘one China’ principle.”
Tien said that if Taiwan does not clarify UN member states’ understanding of the resolution soon, “the cross-strait ‘status quo’ that neither Taiwan nor the PRC is subordinate to the other would be overturned by the PRC.”
Beijing will likely continue to distort the resolution before ultimately using it as a legal pretense to use force against Taiwan by labeling the cross-strait issue as a domestic dispute, he added.
The ministry plans to highlight three points in its appeal to the UN.
First, the UN should recognize and take action against the malicious distortion of Resolution 2758, which threatens to change the “status quo” across the Taiwan Strait, and disrupt peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, it said.
Second, Resolution 2758 does not deny Taiwan the right to meaningfully participate in UN events. The UN should seek to accept Taiwan’s participation using appropriate ways so that Taiwan can contribute to the UN reaching its sustainable development goals, it said.
Third, the UN Secretariat should remain neutral. It must stop falsely citing Resolution 2758 or using it to prevent Taiwanese nationals and news media from visiting UN buildings or attending or covering UN conferences and events. The government’s steady and moderate approach over the past eight years to promote Taiwan’s re-entry to the UN has been widely recognized by the international community and has enabled more countries with similar ideas to join the ranks of supporting Taiwan in its pursuit of international participation, the ministry said.
Aside from inviting permanent representatives to the UN from ally countries to jointly send a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the ministry said it would continue to ask them to speak out for Taiwan at the general debate and other General Assembly events this year.
The US government in April publicly issued a four-point statement refuting the misuse of Resolution 2758, the ministry said.
Delegates to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China Policy summit in July launched the 2758 Initiative, pledging to pass resolutions in their own parliaments to reject Beijing’s distortion of Resolution 2758 and international law regarding Taiwan’s status.
The Australian Senate last month took the lead by unanimously passing an “urgency motion” against China’s misrepresentation and misinterpretation of Resolution 2758 to undermine Taiwan’s status.
Additional reporting by CNA
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should