Taiwan and China should reopen talks as soon as possible, first engaging one another on issues that are without political connotations, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Vice Chairman Chiu Tai-san (
Chiu made the remarks after attending a seminar sponsored by the Graduate Institute of American Studies at Tamkang University.
Saying that the MAC -- the nation's highest-ranking government agency that deals with China policy -- fully understands China's insistence on certain principles in its relations with Taiwan, Chiu said the MAC hopes that in turn China will come to better understand Taiwan's democratic development and the thinking of its people.
If the two sides of the Taiwan Strait could come to a better understanding of each other, and a meeting could go forward between Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Wang Daohan (汪道涵), progress could then be made toward reaching a consensus.
Taiwan and China can restart their negotiations by first focusing on matters without political connotations and only later moving toward more complex issues, Chiu said.
Chiu said that Beijing had displayed a high degree of willingness to restart cross-strait dialogue in its seven-point statement issued on May 17, prior to President Chen Shui-bian's (
To advance that goal, a new Koo-Wang meeting would be a good platform for restarting talks that were suspended after former president Lee Teng-hui (
Saying that cross-strait disputes must be resolved peacefully and that the differences between Taiwan and China are a result of differences between the two countries' systems, Chiu said that the international community would not accept the use of force by China to resolve its disputes with Taiwan. Good faith and good deeds are the key to forging interaction, Chiu said.
Koo and Wang, the top negotiators for Taiwan and China, met for the first time in 1993 in Singapore, marking an historic contact between the two sides.
MAC Chairman Joseph Wu (
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
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘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
RSS