South China Morning Poast
Date: 1 Jan, 2021
By: Lawrence Chung

• In New Year’s Day speech, Tsai Ing-wen says she hopes for a gradual return to regular people-to-people exchanges with Beijing once pandemic eases
• Tsai might need to be more cautious if the new US administration changes policy, observers say

With the start of a new US administration less than a month away, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has stressed the need for cross-strait stability and offered talks with Beijing to end confrontation.

But the prospects for such talks were low, with Beijing’s continued insistence that Taipei abide by the “one China” principle and abandon any thought of independence, observers said.

In her New Year’s Day address on Friday, Tsai said stable cross-strait relations no longer concerned just the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.    [FULL  STORY]