The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday accused former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) of belittling the country at a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru.
Lien, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) envoy to this year’s summit, described his encounter with Hu on Friday as an “interesting” meeting between two “old friends.”
“It is very significant for old friends to meet each other outside of Asia,” the former vice president told reporters after his 40-minute meeting with Hu at the hotel where the Chinese leader was staying.
PHOTO: AFP
DPP caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) said Lien had not met Hu as the official envoy of his country but as a private citizen, which had belittled Taiwan’s status as a sovereign country.
He said the meeting repudiated Ma’s claim that both sides of the Taiwan Strait had agreed not to deny each other’s existence, or “mutual non-denial.”
Lai said the DPP was concerned that Lien’s referral to Hu as an “old friend” indicated that the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were cultivating a closer relationship.
Citing Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang’s (秦剛) correction of a foreign journalist who referred to Ma as “Taiwan’s president,” during a press conference in Beijing on Thursday, Lai said that mutual non-denial was a myth.
He said Ma had not reached any such agreement with China, yet claimed Beijing was showing Taiwan “goodwill.”
DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津) said Lien had addressed Hu as “General Secretary Hu,” referring to his position as CCP general secretary, while Hu addressed Lien as “chairman,” referring to his post as honorary KMT chairman.
“Lien turned the meeting into the latest example of the KMT-CCP communication platform and forgot that he was representing the nation,” Yeh said.
The KMT-CCP platform was detailed in Lien and Hu’s five-point “vision for cross-strait peace” in April 2005 in Beijing and based on the so-called “1992 Consensus.”
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS