A joint declaration by Pacific leaders was reissued yesterday morning with mentions of Taiwan removed after China slammed an earlier version as a “mistake” that “must be corrected.”
After five days of talks in Tonga, a “cleared” communique was released on Friday that reaffirmed a 30-year-old agreement allowing Taiwan to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). However, the wording immediately raised the ire of Chinese diplomats, who piled pressure on Pacific leaders to amend the document.
The forum reissued the communique without explanation yesterday morning, conspicuously deleting the paragraph concerning the bloc’s “relations with Taiwan.”
Photo: AFP
“It must be a mistake. It must be a mistake,” Chinese Special Envoy for Pacific Island Countries Affairs Qian Bo (錢波) said on Friday. “This is a surprising mistake made by someone. I’m not sure, but I think it must be corrected.”
Qian earlier said he had contacted the bloc’s secretariat in the hope of clarifying the situation.
“This should not be the final communique, there must be a correction on the text,” he said.
The original paragraph — titled “Relations with Taiwan/Republic of China” — said leaders had “reaffirmed” the 1992 decision that paved the way for Taiwan’s participation in the forum. Beijing has aggressively sought to exclude Taiwan from international bodies and rejects its autonomy. The Solomon Islands, China’s main partner in the South Pacific, has lobbied for Taiwan to be stripped of its “development partner” status with the PIF.
A spokesperson from the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade yesterday said that there had not been a consensus on the paragraph in question.
“There are a range of views among the 18 Pacific Islands Forum members and part of the Pacific way is respect for different views and the importance of consensus,” the spokesperson added in a statement.
A PIF spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed anger at China’s actions.
“Taiwan condemns China’s rude and unreasonable intervention and irrational behavior that undermines regional peace and stability and calls on all like-minded countries to pay close attention to China’s actions,” it said in a statement.
However, the ministry also said that the joint communique as published did not undermine Taiwan’s status at the forum nor preclude it from participating in the future.
The South Pacific was once seen as a bastion of support for Taiwan’s claim to statehood, but China has methodically whittled this down.
In the past five years, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Nauru have all been persuaded to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
Beijing insists its diplomatic allies withdraw recognition of Taiwan.
Palau, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu maintain diplomatic relations with Taipei, but face constant pressure to change.
US territories Guam and American Samoa were also elevated to associate members of the forum, against the wishes of the Solomon Islands.
Additional reporting by Reuters
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
RSS