Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/31
By: Claudia Liu and Elaine Hou

Taipei, Aug. 31 (CNA) China’s military has the capability to blockade and seize Taiwan’s outlying

islands and has not cut back on military exercises targeting Taiwan, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) said in a report Wednesday.

In its report to the Legislature on China’s military power, the ministry said an invasion by China could be triggered by developments such as Taiwan declaring or moving toward independence, Taiwan acquiring nuclear weapons, and foreign powers deploying forces in Taiwan or intervening in its domestic affairs.

The Chinese military continues to formulate plans for an all-out attack on Taiwan by 2020, while Chinese vessels have been venturing near Taiwan to collect intelligence under the guise of conducting marine research, the MND said in its report.

It said Chinese government vessels have been refurbished to resemble military vessels and are often dispatched to waters near Taiwan for “scientific research” and other purposes.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/22
By: Sunrise Huang, Chen Chia-lun, Ku Chuan, Chu Tse-wei and Evelyn Kao
Ko Wen-je (柯文哲, left), Sha Hailin (沙海林)

Taipei, Aug. 22 (CNA) Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Monday hailed the upcoming twin-city forum between Taipei and Shanghai as an opportunity to break the stalemate in official cross-Taiwan Strait exchanges seen in recent months.

Ko made the comment after Sha Hailin (沙海林), director of the Department of United Front Work of the Communist Party’s Shanghai Municipal Committee, arrived in Taiwan to attend the forum scheduled for Tuesday.

Sha and his delegation were greeted at Taipei Songshan Airport by a protest organized by the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union but they were also welcomed by aboriginal people from Jianshi Township in Hsinchu County.

Some 100 city policemen were mobilized to maintain order at the airport.

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/18
By: Feng Chao and Christie Chen

Hangzhou, China, Aug. 18 (CNA) A senior Chinese official has said that China will continue to honor its existing agreements with Taiwan but he has ruled out any new accords unless what Beijing sees as a precondition is met.

Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), head of the Taiwan Affairs Office under China’s State Council, or cabinet, arrived in Hangzhou Wednesday for a meeting with the heads of nine Taiwanese business associations in Zhejiang Province.

During the meeting, Hsieh Chih-tung (謝智通), executive vice president of the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland, told Zhang about the difficulties facing Taiwanese businesses that specialize in machinery, equipment and other fields, and expressed concern that China will reduce its preferential policies for Taiwanese businesses.     [FULL  STORY]

CONCISE:Washington believes that clear, direct and consistent communication supports the development of relations across the Taiwan Strait, a US official said

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 24, 2016
By: Staff writer, with CNA, WASHINGTON

The US on Thursday urged Taiwan and China to keep channels of communication open after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) expressed hope in a Washington Post interview that China would show more flexibility in dealing with cross-strait relations.

“The United States has a deep and abiding interest in cross-strait stability. We welcome steps by both sides of the Taiwan Strait to reduce tensions and improve cross-strait relations,” US Department of State East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau spokesperson Grace Choi said.

“We urge both sides to keep channels of communication open,” Choi said via e-mail.

In her interview with the Post, Tsai said that she hopes Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) would show more flexibility in dealing with cross-strait relations and “can appreciate that Taiwan is a democratic society in which the leader has to follow the will of the people.”     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/07/22
By: Claudia Liu and Lilian Wu

Taipei, July 22 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said Taiwan needs to review its trade

relations with China as the two economies, which have generally been complementary in the past, are now increasingly becoming competitors.

“We need to review the two sides’ economic and trade relations and we must make sure the economic and trade ties are complementary rather than overly competitive,” she said in an interview with the Washington Post, based on a transcript released by the Presidential Office.

Acknowledging that “China is still our largest trading partner,” Tsai said the once complementary nature of the relationship was changing because of the way China’s economy has evolved.

“We had the ability to organize a manufacturing process, and then we moved our manufacturing capability to China to make use of their labor pool. But now the situation is very different. (Chinese) labor costs are increasing, and China has their own capability,” she was quoting as saying.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: July 22, 2016
By: Yuan-Ming Chiao

Mainland China is “extremely dissatisfied” with Taiwan’s safety measures for visiting mainland

tourists, an official said Thursday, following the death of 26 people in a tour bus fire in Taoyuan.

The remarks were made by Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Straits (海旅會) Secretary General Liu Kezhi (劉克智), one of nine mainland officials who arrived in Taiwan to assist the family members of those who died Tuesday in the fire — the worst incident of its kind since entry was opened to mainland Chinese tourists in 2008.

“The mainland requests that Taiwan thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident and related culpability and thoughtfully complete the work necessary to receive victims’ relatives and family members,” Liu told reporters outside a temporary shrine for the victims in Taoyuan’s Zhongli District. Family members of the deceased along with local officials arrived and were taken to the shrine by Taiwanese officials.

In response, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC, 陸委會) spokesperson Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) stated that Taiwan would work hard to raise the quality of its tourism services and “examine deeply from painful experience” “problematic” parts of the sector.     [FULL  STORY]

China’s rising patriotic youth movement threatens to further sour its relations with Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/07/21
By: Chang Shin-wei

A well known Taiwanese columnist wrote in a July 20 op-ed in the Chinese-language edition of

Financial Times that rising nationalism among China’s youth will drive China further from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Taiwanese writer and columnist Chang Tieh-chih (張鐵志) observed that the number of “little pinks” (小粉紅) in China — the younger generation that worships the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and President Xi Jinping (習近平) — is growing. The group attacks people whose ideas do not comply with their concept of patriotism or do not have a “heart for China,” he said.

Besides blindly supporting the CCP and Xi, Chang wrote, the “little pinks” do not know other ways to demonstrate love for their country. They do not express their opposition against the government, speak for minorities, ask for justice or work for change to create a better society.     [FULL  STORY]

China unilaterally suspended cross-strait communication mechanisms late last month after judging that President Tsai had failed to meet Beijing’s expectations.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/07/18
By: J. Michael Cole

Sometimes it is not enough for China’s propaganda organs to brainwash people through

repetition, such as, say, by insisting that there is only one China and that Taiwan is indivisibly part of it. On some occasions the facts themselves must be created.

China did just that at the weekend when the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Xinhua news agency reported on remarks by Taiwan Affairs Office chairman Zhang Zhijun (張志軍). During a speech at the fifth World Peace Forum in Beijing on Sunday, Zhang, a keen practitioner of saturation propaganda, touched on souring relations in the Taiwan Strait following the election of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as president in Taiwan.

While there was nothing atypical in Zhang blaming Tsai’s refusal to recognize the so-called “1992 consensus” and absurd (to the Taiwanese) “one China” framework, he did go beyond the usual rhetoric by rewriting recent history.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: July 2, 2016
By: CNA

TAIPEI — Taiwan’s Navy said Friday that a supersonic anti-ship missile fired by mistake earlier

in the day did not cross the median line of the Taiwan Strait when it fell into waters off outlying Penghu County.

Vice Adm. Mei Chia-shu (梅家樹), the Navy’s chief of staff, said that the Hsiung Feng III missile was fired by mistake from one of its 500-ton Chinchiang-class corvettes, which was conducting a drill from a harbor at the Zuoying naval base in Kaohsiung, Southern Taiwan.

Responding to reporters’ questions at a news conference called in the wake of the incident, he said that the missile, which fell into waters about 40 nautical miles northwest of the military harbor, did not cross the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

The missile fell into waters on the Taiwan side of the median line, according to Mei. The strait, which divides Taiwan and China, has an average width of 180 kilometers (97 nautical miles).     [FULL  STORY]