Taiwan’s actions at APEC flawed: DPP

Taipei Times ^ | 10/10/2013 | Chris Wang

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President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration’s participation in the APEC summit has restricted Taiwan’s strategic options and international engagement with its sole focus on cross-strait relations at the annual meeting, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.

“The APEC summit, one of several international events that Taiwan takes part in as a full member, was supposed to be a setting where Taiwan could actively expand its international visibility and interaction. Unfortunately the Ma administration only approached the meeting as an arena for cross-strait political dialogue,” DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said yesterday.

Former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), who represented Ma in his capacity as chairman of the Cross-Straits Common Market Foundation, praised the meeting as “fruitful” upon his return from Bali, Indonesia, yesterday.

Ma’s attitude toward the meeting was the reason Siew never challenged Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) political statement about the “one China” principle during their 30-minute meeting on Sunday.

“The international community could mistakenly believe that Taiwan acknowledged that it was part of China,” Su said, adding that the delegation could have proposed more constructive initiatives and have promoted closer country-to-country cooperation if it had not been so focused on China.

Su reiterated the DPP’s opposition of the “one China” framework and maintained that the political feud across the Taiwan Strait was not a continuation of the Chinese Civil War between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party.

“Dialogue and negotiations between the two sides should never be conducted under the ‘one China’ framework. Nor should Taiwan’s sovereignty be sacrificed in exchange for increased international participation,” Su said.

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Global business tip

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And in other new from Taiwan, the Ministry of National Defense released a report stating China’s combat capabilities are expected to reach a level in 2020 whereby China could successfully mount a full cross-strait attack. According to the latest defense white paper, China's military spending is approximately 10 times Taiwan's annually, and the PLA's soldiers reportedly number local servicemen by nearly 10 times. Beijing now has 2.27 million soldiers and spends up to US$116 billion on military expenditures this year. Taiwan currently has 240,000 soldiers and its defense budget is only around US$10 billion this year, the report said.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2013/10/09/390833/China-able.htm