Former legislative speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) on Friday took over as chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), and said that cross-strait relations should be based on mutual understanding rather than confrontation.
Su assumed the post in a special board meeting of the SEF, a semi-official body tasked with handling technical matters involving China.
He succeeded Frank Wu (吳豊山), who announced his resignation on Dec. 18 last year and stepped down on Dec. 31.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
The foundation’s 35th anniversary is this year, Su said, adding that regardless of cross-strait developments, its core mission remains to serve the people, promote exchanges and build conditions for peace.
The SEF would continue to focus on the people, with an emphasis on cross-strait dialogue and exchanges, he said, saying he hoped that China would do the same.
The foundation would also continue to express goodwill that promotes understanding and exchanges, efforts that aim to prevent conflicts and create opportunities to resolve problems, Su said.
SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said he hoped that the SEF and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits could engage in normal exchanges.
Communication between the SEF and the association has been suspended since former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected in 2016.
The association said negotiations and communications with the SEF could only continue if the latter was authorized to confirm adherence to the so-called “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted to making up in 2000.
It refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and China that both sides of the Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS