Despite widespread criticism across the political spectrum of Saturday’s planned meeting between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜) yesterday said he supported the pursuit of peaceful cross-strait ties and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
“While the process for setting the Ma-Xi meeting lacked transparency and has unsettled all sectors of society, it has been the consistent policy of the PFP and myself to strive for peaceful and stable cross-strait development,” Soong said in a statement.
Soong said the party would not relinquish its pursuit of peace, equal exchanges and mutual respect across the Taiwan Strait simply because of the public’s discontent with Ma’s “coalition administration” with his top aide, former National Security Council secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰).
The historic summit between Ma and Xi in Singapore in their capacity as leaders on either side of the Taiwan Strait would be conducive to stabilizing the fragile situation in East Asia and defusing the long-term confrontation between Taipei and Beijing, Soong said.
“This is a breakthrough in cross-strait ties,” he said, adding that his party does not oppose such a meeting, but would adopt a more discreet attitude when seeking to further peaceful exchanges between the two sides.
Soong founded the PFP after losing the 2000 presidential race, in which he ran as an independent after failing to obtain the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) nomination.
Soong urged the Ma administration to provide the legislature and the public with a detailed account of its negotiations with China in arranging the meeting.
Soong called on Ma and Xi to issue an apology over China’s 1895 cession of Taiwan to Japan without regard for the opposition from Taiwanese and the Chinese Civil War between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party, which tore apart tens of millions of families and cost many lives.
“They should jointly shoulder the responsibility for the historical pains inflicted by their ancestors, to assuage the sufferings of Taiwanese who fell victim to the enslavement of the Japanese or were forced to flee their homes and live apart from their families in China,” Soong said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
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