The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday that internecine strife within the Chinese administration was obstructing progress on establishing direct cross-strait links.
MAC Vice Chairman Chen Ming-tong (
"My understanding is that one side in China's administration insists that China should talk to Taiwan right away, while the other side demands that China should not discuss the matter with Taiwan until after the 2004 presidential election to avoid helping President Chen Shui-bian win the election," Chen Ming-tong told reporters.
"The PRC created the Nauru incident in order to exacerbate tensions and this has further impeded the establishment of the `three links.' When China ends its internal conflict, establishment of the three links will proceed smoothly," he said.
Nauru established ties with Beijing on the day Chen Shui-bian became DPP chairman after China offered the tiny Pacific-island state a multi-million dollar aid and debt relief package.
According to a report in a Chinese-language newspaper, the deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office under China's Ministry of Communications, Li Jiansheng (李建生), said: "The door to discuss the establishment of the three links has not closed because of the `one country on each side' remark."
"`One country on each side,' of course, influenced cross-strait relations. But Vice Premier Qian Qichen's (
However, Li said, "The establishment of the three links across the strait is a domestic issue, even though the vice premier said that the content of `one China' could be avoided in the negotiation."
Li's remarks are China's first comment on direct links since Chen's "one country on each side" remark of Aug. 3.
Shi Hwei-yow (
"When China comes under unbearable pressure to establish the direct three links and realizes the impossibility of doing so under its `one China principle,' the two sides will be able to resume discussion of the matter," Shi told the Taipei Times.
Chen Ming-tong nevertheless said that Taiwan was willing to talk.
"Establishing the direct three links is a part of our policy. President Chen has reiterated that the mainland policy remains unchanged. China should sit down and discuss the matter with us right away," he said.
Chen added that a proposal to establish direct links would be submitted to the Legislative Yuan in November.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was wooing leaders from across Africa with a banquet on Wednesday night, King Mswati III of Eswatini was notably absent. That is because the kingdom — about the size of New Jersey and with just 1.2 million people — is one of Taiwan’s remaining dozen diplomatic allies. That means Eswatini does not participate in Xi’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the centerpiece of China’s diplomatic outreach to Africa, which was held in Beijing this week. The landlocked nation, which sits between Mozambique and South Africa, is the last holdout in Beijing’s seven-plus decade mission to make Africa
RSS