Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Taiwan stuck in ‘Red Queen race’

J. Michael Cole 寇謐將

One can sense that elections are coming when President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) camp resumes its use of the word “Taiwan,” a term that has become close to verboten in both official declarations and abroad in the three years since he took office.

The recent controversy over a leaked WHO memo instructing staff at the global health body to refer to Taiwan as “Taiwan, province of China” has Beijing’s fingers all over it — there is confirmation that the designation was the result of a memorandum of understanding signed by China and the WHO in 2005.

Croatian visa rules list ‘Taiwan, PRC’

Taipei Times

Taiwan is considered a territory under the jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by some European countries that granted Taiwan visa exemption earlier this year, enquiries by the Taipei Times have revealed.

Croatia refers to the country as “Taiwan, People’s Republic of China” in its regulations on the visa regime, while Taiwan is placed by Slovenia under the category of “China,” which also includes Hong Kong and Macau.

Montenegro made no mention of Taiwan in its regulations on the visa regime. It previously defined Taiwan as an entity or territorial authority that was not recognized.

Ma’s empty protests are more than a bad joke

James Wang 王景弘

So there’s this senior official who is having an affair. He goes to a hotel where he gets up to things he would prefer no one else found out about. There, he is caught with his pants down, so to speak, and he scrambles around for a team of defense lawyers. He finds a team of three. Lawyer One tries to play the whole thing down, saying the official’s predecessor had got up to the same thing. Lawyer Two gets all sanctimonious about the fact that this was a secret rendezvous, demanding the head of the Judas who leaked the story. Lawyer Three opts for diversionary tactics, saying they got the lady’s name wrong, they used her husband’s surname — that’s not very polite, is it?

US ‘clarifies’ statements on ‘one China’

Taipei Times

The US Department of State has issued a note of “clarification” that appears to contradict Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Chief of General Staff Chen Bingde’s (陳炳德) version of what he was told by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about US policy toward Taiwan.

At a Washington press conference on Wednesday, Chen said: “During my office call on Secretary Clinton this morning, she told me — she reiterated the US policy; that is, there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is part of China.”

His remarks alarmed Taiwanese-American groups, who called the US Department of State on Thursday asking for an explanation.

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