While government officials considered Morris Chang's (
Because of China's diplomatic blockade, APEC is one of the few international organizations that Taiwan is able to participate in. However, since 1991, when Taiwan entered the economic forum using the name "Chinese Taipei," APEC has never allowed Taiwanese presidents to attend the leaders' summit. Therefore, how the president's envoy performs at the forum with the other heads of state becomes a focus from Taiwan's perspective.
This year, the president selected Chang, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, to serve as his proxy, a choice described by Foreign Minister James Huang (黃志芳) and other officials in charge of Taiwan's APEC participation as "creative and brilliant."
Although Chang had never previously been involved in political affairs, his performance at the two-day leaders' summit was impressive judging from his frequent and active interactions with US President George W. Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
But Sophie Chang's performance all but matched that of her husband during the summit as she enjoyed close interaction with Laura Bush and the spouses of other leaders at the events APEC arranged for them.
Viewing her trip to APEC as a diplomatic mission, Sophie Chang told reporters that she had done a lot of homework and research on the various spouses and made notes on their personal background to take with her.
"Since I viewed this trip as a task, I tried to perform it perfectly," Sophie Chang said.
Sophie Chang, 62, speaks fluent English, since she studied in the US after finishing senior high school in Taiwan. Thanks to her linguistic ability, she was able to chat with the other spouses without the need of a translator, shortening the distance between them.
In order to highlight Taiwan's features, she also wore colorful cheongsams by Taiwanese designers, and her elegant and cordial attitude won praise from all corners.
Knowing that the relationship with the US is an important one for Taiwan, Sophie Chang spent much of her time finding common topics to discuss with US first lady Laura Bush. She discovered that both their daughters are living in New York and working as volunteers at a non-profit group that promotes Laura Bush's "First Book" project.
Laura Bush has been promoting the project, which aims to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own brand new books, in the US.
Sophie Chang showed her an e-mail written by her daughter, and Laura wrote "with thanks to First Book" on it as a gift to Chang's daughter.
Sophie Chang even suggested that Taiwan could provide the organization with Chinese books for language learners since she believes Mandarin will become a major world language in the future. Laura Bush welcomed the idea and suggested they "could do that together."
Meanwhile, Sophie Chang also took time out to socialize with the Chinese president's wife, the wife of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin's wife. They were all extremely friendly, she said.
Reviewing the trip, Sophie Chang stressed that she acted like herself and did not pretend to be another person.
"Being myself and being natural was the key to getting along with the other spouses," she said. "The visit was an honor and also a duty for me, I'm so glad that I could make it."
SMALL RESPITE: The past few rainy days, which came after one month of virtually no rain on the west coast, did not ease Taiwan’s water shortage problems, the CWB said A weather system from southern China has over the past three days replenished Taiwan’s reservoirs with almost 16 million tonnes of water, giving Taiwan a slight relief from a water shortage, the Water Resources Agency (WRA) said yesterday. From 12am on Tuesday to 4pm yesterday, about 15.97 million tonnes fell in the catchment areas of the nation’s reservoirs, which is slightly more than Taiwan’s average daily water use, it said. However, the rain would ease today, with only isolated showers forecast in Hualien and Taitung counties, as well as in southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said. For other regions, cloudy to
A debt dispute between a restaurant owner and a criminal ring might be behind a bizarre cockroach attack at the Taipei eatery on Monday night while it was hosting a police gathering, Taipei Police Commissioner Chen Jia-chang (陳嘉昌) said yesterday. Preliminary findings of a police investigation into the case at the G House Taipei suggest that the unusual incident might have been directed at the restaurant’s owner, who allegedly owes money to the Bamboo Union, Chen said. The suspects were Bamboo Union members and there was no evidence indicating that the cockroaches were targeted at the police officers at the restaurant, he
Taiwan’s armed forces should closely monitor China’s development of a new tanker aircraft, as it would significantly boost the Chinese air force’s capability to carry out long-range raids, a military expert said on Wednesday. Ou Si-fu (歐錫富), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said in an online article that China is developing a tanker variant of its Y-20 military transport aircraft, known as the Y-20U. The Y-20 has a maximum take-off weight of 220 tonnes and the tanker variant is expected to carry up to 60 tonnes of fuel, more than three times the maximum
TRAVELING WHILE CONTAGIOUS: The highest risk of infection is indoors, especially in settings where people take off their masks to eat and drink, an expert warned The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday posted a list of places visited by people who were recently diagnosed with COVID-19 while they were likely contagious, urging people who visited the sites at the same time to practice self-health management. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that confirmed case No. 1,129 — a woman in her 60s who works at Novotel Taipei Taoyuan International Airport, a designated quarantine facility, and tested positive on Friday — visited Chiayi between Friday last week and Monday. On the first day of her trip, she visited the Big Chiayi
RSS