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Ma touts China ties in interview
COLD SHOULDER: The president reiterated his desire to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and was rebuffed by a senior citizen all in the same day
By Chiu Chih-jou and Jason Pan / Staff reporter, with staff writer and CNA
President Ma Ying-jeou visits a 112-year-old Rukai woman in Pingtung County’s Sandimen Township yesterday.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
In an interview published yesterday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said that he has been highly active in developing cross-relations since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) assumed his post last year, adding that he believes that the upcoming APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting would be a suitable occasion for a meeting between him and Xi.
However, since Beijing remains reserved about the prospect of such a summit, the government has no concrete plan for it, Ma said in response to media queries in an interview in Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun.
In the interview, Ma discussed a range of issues, such as the cross-strait service trade agreement and the nation’s economic and trade development.
The president said that when Xi met former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) at last year’s APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, the Chinese leader went beyond reiterating Beijing’s standard position on the importance of promoting the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.
According to Ma, Xi said then that in the “long term,” the political differences between the two sides must be resolved so they are not passed on from generation to generation.
The government’s stance toward interactions with China has been and remains: “First the urgent, then the gradual; first the easy, then the difficult; first economics, then politics,” Ma said.
Ma made headlines on a separate occasion yesterday, when, while on a visit to an Aboriginal Rukai village in Pingtung County’s Sandimen Township (三地門) he was rejected by an elderly woman after asking her for a kiss.
The episode took place at an event in the township’s Chingye Village (青葉) held to commemorate Rukai elder Peng Yu-mei’s (彭玉梅) 112th birthday.
When the president took her by the hands and asked if he could kiss her on the cheek, Peng turned him down, saying that “no other man aside from my husband has ever touched my body,” drawing a bit of embarrassed laughter from Ma and the other guests.
After being spurned, Ma presented Peng with gifts that included a red envelope, ornamental items, a presidential watch and red tea.
Peng was born in 1903 and has witnessed multiple changes of government through her lifetime, she said.
She has a big family, with more than 100 members spanning across six generations, she added.
source: Taipei Times
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