Taiwan Media: Taiwan Authorities List China as a 'Foreign Country'

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, August 27, 2003

Taiwan Media: Taiwan Authorities List China as a 'Foreign Country'

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Taiwan authorities have begun to implement Chen Shui-bian's "one country on each side" theory. Taiwan "ministry of foreign affairs" has particularly reviewed and renewed the "Tourist Early Warning Classification Table", in which they listed China as a "foreign country" for the first time in the name of coping with global terrorist attack and guarding against the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic. Meanwhile, in the travel warning areas marked with three different colors��yellow, orange and red, China is the only country listed in the Asia-Pacific region marked with the orange color, Taiwan "foreign ministry" also advises Taiwan people "to temporarily put off their trips to China".

According to a Taiwan media report, departments of Taiwan authorities never directly called Chinese mainland "China" in the past in their official or open documents, instead they habitually called the mainland "the opposite side of the Strait", so as to make it conform to the current institutional design known as "one country, two regions" (the Taiwan region and the mainland region) as enshrined in the "regulations on cross-Strait people's relations".

Taiwan "ministry of foreign affairs" listed not only the mainland as "China" in the tourism early warning table, but also Hong Kong and Macao because of possible outbreak of post-SARS epidemic. This also broke Taiwan authorities' previous practice under which the "affairs of China, Hong Kong and Macao" were separate from their "diplomatic business", and were instead placed under the charge of "Mainland Affairs Council".

According to the latest table, Thailand (especially Phuket Island), Indonesia, the Philippines, the United States, Canada and Australia have been listed in the yellow-warning area because of the shadow of terrorist attacking activities. Australia will possibly be subject to smallpox virus attack by terrorists.

With regard to the SARS epidemic, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, Macao, China and Canada, with the exception of China which is listed as a region to which "trips are temporarily put off", all the other regions are listed in regions "calling for attention".

By PD Online Staff Liu Wei

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