Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) upcoming China visit has a “pre-arranged itinerary” orchestrated solely by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an official familiar with cross-strait affairs said yesterday.
Cheng on Monday said she has accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to visit China from Tuesday until April 12.
The official, who declined to be named, said that when former KMT chairmen met with Xi, delegations often included KMT lawmakers, business groups and media, all departing Taipei together in a large entourage.
Photo: Reuters
However, this time the KMT confirmed that no lawmakers would accompany Cheng, and she would fly with a Chinese airline, the official said, adding that media access is restricted to a handful of outlets with correspondents based in Beijing, while the list of accompanying business groups has yet to be released.
“From this, it is clear that the Cheng-Xi meeting is inevitably confined within the CCP’s pre-set ‘one China’ framework,” the official said. “How can the Republic of China [Taiwan] be safeguarded under such circumstances?”
The official said that with Beijing tightly controlling information, it remains unclear what is to be discussed at the Cheng-Xi meeting, including whether Taiwan’s US arms purchases would be raised.
“A lot of business leaders are also afraid of being singled out by Cheng [to join the trip],” the official said, adding that many KMT lawmakers expressed relief at not joining the delegation, citing pressure from their constituencies and describing the prospect as “terrifying.”
The official said that no one in Taiwan opposes peace, but the greatest risk posed by the KMT lies in placing Taiwan’s future in the hands of China’s leaders.
“At the press conference [on Monday], Cheng repeatedly claimed that the Cheng-Xi meeting is in the pursuit of cross-strait peace and stability — but does she represent the mainstream public opinion for peace? At best, it is a one-way path toward unification, and in reality, it undermines Taiwan’s true peace,” the official said.
Cheng, in response to media queries on Friday, said that her China trip is for the purpose of cross-strait peace and stability, and has nothing to do with arms purchases or other issues.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS