Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Representative to the US Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told a Washington press conference on Thursday that he had held “intense and meaningful” conversations with US officials over the past few days, covering a wide array of issues from the Sunflower movement to security problems in the South China Sea.
Wu visits Washington every few months to explain the DPP’s policies and to hear the views and perspectives of the US policy community.
There have been reports of concern within the US government that the DPP was responsible for organizing and promoting the Sunflower movement and its takeover of the Legislative Yuan and the Executive Yuan in Taipei.
However, Wu said he had not heard any criticisms on this issue from the officials he met and that US officials had a “neutral” stance on the movement.
“I can tell you that the US government has not made any kind of criticism of the DPP or accused it of instigating or organizing student protests,” he said.
Wu said the DPP had been criticized for “advocacy and lobbying” in Washington for the Sunflower movement, but such criticisms were without basis.
“From the very beginning, when I was appointed to this position, I pledged that I would not bring our domestic political disputes to Washington and that pledge remains in place — we have no interest in taking these disputes abroad,” he said.
He said he had told US officials that there were three major causes for the movement: unemployment among and low salaries for college graduates; a need for constitutional reform to improve the nation’s government and apprehension about cross-strait relations.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has said it is willing to talk about and review the cross-strait services trade pact, but it is not willing to change any part of it, Wu said.
It had led to widespread concern the Ma government might sign another agreement with China — “something totally unexpected that we cannot change” — that would turn out to be “a nightmare for the people of Taiwan,” he said.
It was these factors that had created “unrest and anxiety” in Taiwan and the Ma administration had done little to improve them, he said.
Wu said that he had also discussed US President Barack Obama’s recent four-nation trip to Asia and tensions between China and Vietnam in the South China Sea. “The US is concerned about the rising tensions as the chances for conflict continue to escalate,” he said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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