Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Taiwan should abolish the ECFA

Yen Huai-shing 顏慧欣

With China threatening waves of economic sanctions following US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, whether to continue with the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) or abolish it has once more become the subject of debate. The pact has held Taiwan back for so long, it is perhaps time to exhibit some economic resilience and move on.

The original objective of signing the agreement more than a decade ago was to set out the framework for economic activity between Taiwan and China, and iron out protocols in four areas: trade in goods, trade in services, investment guarantees and conflict resolution.

Beijing twists history to its own end

Gerritvan der Wees

The People’s Republic of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office on Wednesday published a white paper titled The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mainland Affairs Council responded strongly to a number of important fallacies in this paper, as it seriously distorts history.

As “evidence” that Taiwan “belonged to China since ancient times,” it describes how the Sui Dynasty sent three expeditions east. Whether “east” was “Taiwan” is not clear, as they discuss “Liu Qiu,” which might refer to Okinawa.

Hsia’s China trip undermines Taiwan

Taipei Times Editorials

Amid the worst cross-strait security crisis in 20 years, the Chinese State Council on Wednesday released a white paper titled The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era, an update to Taiwan white papers issued in 1993 and 2000.

The new white paper says that Taiwan is part of China and Beijing “will not renounce the use of force” to achieve unification, hailing the “one country, two systems” framework as the most inclusive solution to the situation, but not mentioning the so-called “1992 consensus.”

Nothing ‘unfortunate’ about visit

Chris van Laak

“We support democratic Taiwan, but a visit by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi is of no benefit to the nation.”

That was the subtext of some op-eds published in the past few days in liberal-leaning Western newspapers and magazines.

The visit was “unfortunate,” Shelley Rigger, a political scientist at Davidson College, said in a New Yorker interview published on Thursday last week, while Pulitzer prize-winning author Thomas Friedman in a New York Times piece published on Monday last week, before Pelosi had even arrived in Taiwan, found her planned trip “utterly reckless.”

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