Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is making unification a more important component of his “China Dream,” despite Taipei’s pledges to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait and to preserve the “status quo” in cross-strait relations, a US-based foreign and defense policy commentator said.
“Tensions are rising between Beijing and Taipei,” American Enterprise Institute foreign and defense policy studies research fellow Michael Mazza said in an article titled “Is a Storm Brewing in the Taiwan Strait?” published by the Council on Foreign Relations on Friday.
Mazza linked Beijing’s increasing pressure on Taiwan with Xi’s vision for the future of China, or “China Dream,” of which Xi has made unification an important component.
Xi “began talking about the ‘great renewal of the Chinese nation’ — which, for him, requires formal unification with Taiwan — during a speech he gave in 2012 as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP],” Mazza said.
Xi last year at the CCP’s 19th National Congress said that by mid-century, the party would “develop China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful,” Mazza said.
“If Xi turns out to be unable to deliver on his promises of economic prosperity for all Chinese people, as may well be the case, the other components of the China Dream will become more important,” Mazza said, referring to the unification of China and Taiwan.
Taiwan has proven itself a responsible actor in East Asia and would seek to avert a potentially cataclysmic collision “as long as doing so does not require submitting to Beijing,” Mazza said.
However, whether Beijing will accept anything less than submission is not at all clear, he said.
“The Taiwan Strait is already known for its strong winds and choppy waters — but rougher seas lie ahead,” Mazza said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening 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) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS