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tv   Joseph Wu  Al Jazeera  November 30, 2018 2:32pm-3:01pm +03

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they're protesting against years of financial hardship the farmers say the government has neglected them by not giving them enough subsidies. and it seems there is no end yet to sri lanka's political crisis with parliament passing a motion to cut ministers salaries and travel expenses it's designed to disrupt the administration of disputed prime minister mahinda rajapakse office he was controversially installed after the president sacked his prime minister last month and a move many considered unconstitutional a tokyo court has extended the detention of the former chairman of car company nissan by ten days carlos ghosn is accused of underreporting his salary by millions of dollars over several years which he denies he's been in detention since november the nineteen those are the headlines talk to al-jazeera is coming up next stay with us.
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only. you can. see. i'm a dream brown in taipei the couple of taiwan there for the past sixty nine years has been self-governing but this place is also claimed by mainland china and in the past it has threatened repeatedly to take taiwan back by force if necessary they just had local elections here and the ruling party did very badly china it seems may well have been a factor i've been talking to joseph who taiwan's foreign minister who has the job of selling taiwan's message overseas at a time when china is doing all it can to isolate taiwan internationally he admits
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it's a frustrating job i can not think of any other country that has a more difficult foreign policy then taiwan china has been trying very hard to isolate taiwan internationally joseph taiwan's foreign minister talks to al-jazeera . joseph we welcome to talk to al-jazeera the last time i met you you were secretary general of the democratic progressive party you had just secured the presidency the legislature your party had done very well in those elections we've just had local elections and things haven't gone so well what what went wrong ruling party we need to care about all kinds of policies. and the difficult thing is that if we want to be seeing us a responsible government responsible political party you know we need to carry our
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policies in a moderate way and taiwan has been seeing a moderate country and taiwan is a responsible country but of course that is going to be seen by our own supporters that the reforms the pace of reform is too small and therefore they may not be a supportive passionate as before but what was the issue the made voters turn away from you do you think was it china was it the economy was it same sex marriage in every major election here in taiwan china is always a factor but it might not be the determining factor in the christian show that of course china or the policy has been at the bait it might be seeing more important then in other directions and this is the election even though we're trying to factor is playing a little part of it but it's not an overwhelming factor in this particular election
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and china is trying to interfere and we saw that china is gearing up is this information campaign or airing its support for particular candidates and that might be the small part the china factor is playing and this will actually what evidence is there of china meddling in the election campaign the a volume on the internet seem to be heavily influenced by the chinese operation. be ip addresses in china they know things like that for example the ip address in china or somewhere set up by china and they try to infiltrate with their messages there's a common knowledge over here in taiwan fifty cent's army in china they are roaming the taiwan internet world for example some of our candidates have their facebook. with the chinese language use in their facebook
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account and this is being seen us china trying to influence how was the election and of course china is also trying to get in connect it with some of the local politicians or local organizations some of them trying to get benefit from china things like that has been seeing us china trying to interfere in our election do you think the china's leaders will feel that their strategy of strangling taiwan economically diplomatically is working and that now they're going to double down on their efforts to try to bring about reunification in five to ten years even sooner . that is something that many people here in taiwan have been discussing about in taiwan selection committee seeing. chinese success all their interference then it's going to be very difficult to stop china from trying again and again or double down on the interference in action and this is only
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a little coy election and we have seen china trying to interfere in the election process when we have the nation oil action in two thousand and twenty china might want to gear up its interference campaign against taiwan but i slice a little bit china might play a little part in the most important part is the people's decision and us i see it you know people are intelligent enough to the site you know what is right and what is wrong one thing is clear from these elections is that democracy in taiwan is is alive and kicking this china of course always likes to make mischief at times like this and it says that the result shows that actually most people don't agree with your ministrations sort of pro independence tones and how they got a point. they might but they also got it wrong in two thousand and sixteen when the
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president was elected she was elected on the premise. here to say the school and therefore this government is going to be very hard to describe support independence if you look at the situation here in taiwan the p.r.c. does not have any jurisdiction over taiwan and taiwan is running by itself you know we have a president we have a parliament and we have free media and therefore taiwan in essence is independent and any government with its came to government or that the people that is going to run this. and it's not pro independence or pro unification is just taiwan taiwan by itself one thing i don't understand you said the the president except the status quo so if she does the then why is china reacting the way it is because china always says we want taiwan to accept there is but one china and taiwan is
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a part of it you are saying the president accepts that no the president accepts the status quo of this call you know if you look at taiwan itself we have not being administered. by china for any single day china never has any jurisdiction over taiwan for any single day so the fact of the reality in taiwan or the status quo in between taiwan and china it's that two sides are separated and for china to claim that we are part of them and they want to unify us against the will of the town its people and that is against the status quo and of course that it's not going to be supported by our people and that is not the point of the government they might support it now other than the election show that perhaps people felt that the stance of your government china was was wrong but perhaps it's time to say we do except we are part of china i mean if you said that . china would loosen the economic news tomorrow and things could go back the way
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they were if you do a public opinion survey again today and i'm sure people are going to tell you the opposite i think the people are going to say that no we are not part of china and we are not going to pursue indication with china even though some of the local candidates in this election might have the tendency of pursuing better relations with china but seeing them you know pursuing a policy of unifying with china is going to be wrong and up to all this is a local election and dog the course of relations has not been debated in this election in their. for relations or trying to factor is not the key factor in this election and therefore we should not interpret the election as if taiwan people choose to unify was china or to choose to push through another route was china you're in charge of spreading taiwan's message to the world but how
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hard is that when taiwan's not part of the united nations you're not part of the world health assembly interpol how difficult is it for you the main the frustrations must be enormous you're absolutely right i can not think of any other country that has a more difficult foreign policy then taiwan china's been trying very hard to isolate taiwan internationally to prevent taiwan from having official relations with other countries or to prevent taiwan from participating in international organizations in china is also trying to change how once. when taiwan is being described by international businesses they try to change taiwan from taiwan into town come on china or taiwan province of china in the form the ministry of foreign affairs over here we need to develop substantive relations with delight
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my to countries and we also have to safeguard those countries that are still having relations with that with taiwan. and in the last two years five countries that have relations with you have defected to china that must hurt it is difficult for us and what we try to do is to make sure that the senior government officials in senior government officials in our diplomatic elyse are highly connected and i think most important trait of taiwan is taiwan is that democracy already and we have very proud of that and many of the like my countries continue to priest i want us a beacon and because taiwan is already a democracy and therefore if we are able to develop closer and closer ties with like minded countries but when former friends like el salvador because of fast so say sort of we're going to recognize beijing there must be this sort of sense of betrayal because these countries up until then point have been your friends you're
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your allies that's right when that happened when they decided that they want to establish diplomatic ties with the people's republic of china and sever ties with taiwan of course people here feel betrayed and that that kind of sentiment can be very strong here but you know since they decided to choose china you know that's their choice and the important thing for taiwan is that we want to make sure that those diplomatic allies remain loyal to taiwan are getting the right thing from taiwan for example education campus city building job training or agricultural development things like this will continue to help these countries and i think many of the countries realize that they are not able to get those kinds of support from the people's republic of china but they are getting state the support from taiwan and those items that i just mentioned what was it a surprise when el salvador defected or did you know in advance it was going to
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happen. we did take some signs that all of the by negotiating with china and therefore you know we try very hard to see whether there's anything else we can work on so you offer the money what would you do to become like a bidding war did not know this doesn't work that way my deputy traveled to el salvador speaking to see me a officials over there and i myself also trouble to salvador speaking to their very senior officials including the president himself and to ask him. this any issue in the relationship that we should work on more in what they say is that every aspect of the relationship is going very well and therefore they try to hide from us their negotiations with china and the leadership of not only trying to hide from taiwan they also try to hide it from the united states or other countries
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in their secret negotiations with china is it money that wins them over china to simply says how much do you need if you read the news of these couple days you can realize that it's money. and it's china offering a huge amount of money from the public record these couple days china for it fifteen billion u.s. dollars to el salvador and of course that is not the game that i want to see in what time was this friendship is to be able to help the people it seems that china strategy is to pick off one by one those remaining countries that have diplomatic relations with taiwan yes. which raises the question what happens if they succeed in doing that and there are no countries left. but what happens there as a minister of foreign affairs you know i wouldn't try to envision that kind of
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result but i think china also has other objectives over taiwan. cutting off all the diplomatic elyse off taiwan if you listen to the top speed top leaders of china and they continue to say that they want to win hearts and minds of the talent's people but when they engage in the very negative way of isolating taiwan or choking off time once international space that is the opposite of what they say they want to achieve winning hearts and minds of the taiwanese people and you can see point of the chinese negative campaign against taiwan is going on that this in between taiwan and china is getting further and further apart and i'm sure that it's not what china wants to see but part of your job is is to sell taiwan to to promote taiwan. how do you describe taiwan how do you promote taiwan when you when you when you go around the world and visit various international organizations
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what's the key point you stress the first point of course taiwan is that the. one is the mature democracy and one can be seeing us a model of democracy in this part of the world and the second aspect is time wise. status in economic development taiwan is already being seeing us a model all for economy developing us well even though the growing rib roast rate in the last few years might not be great but taiwan is undergoing trance formation from the old. mini factoring based economy now to innovation based economy if you look at the. trade relations between taiwan in europe. which is very far away the figure is growing and if you look at the investment of taiwan companies in the very far away country see in europe oil india japan or in the united states or in mexico the number is also growing and therefore it's important to do business
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with i want to swell the situation in the taiwan straits seems fraught at times china has been carrying out military exercises as taiwan has china's been sailing warships very close to to waters the united states has been sending warships into those waters is there a worry that the brinkmanship gets out of control and you're you risk conflict. of course started something that that this is you makers here are watching very carefully but i think we need to watch on our own back we need to watch our own security you know if china is coming too close to our water or it coming too close to our airspace we need to have the sufficient defense capabilities to defend ourselves and from whatever we can see is that chinese expansionism that is causing all this trouble in there for any kind of effort in the international community
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trying to reduce this threat of war or trying to stop china's expansionism should be welcomed has a trump presidency been good for taiwan yes very much so president trump received a phone call from presidents high to congratulate him and vice president pence has also being a very strong supporter of taiwan he has a track record when he was in the congress and the. secretary of state. has also a long track record of supporting taiwan so all together we have seen the very friendly gesture coming from the ministration to what i want and that gesture includes the chance to buy more arms from from washington. but you still can get f. thirty five there's still stuff militarily that the united states won't sell you that must be a bit frustrating because if they were a true friend they'd give you what you wanted they give us what we want and we are
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in the series of discussions with the united states but of course you know i cannot get into the details of the discussion but if you look at the. june twenty seventh. they already made available to taiwan the huge package of arms and that is what we want and that is what we need and i think in time once defense much more than just one particular item in taiwan in the united states have been discussing very intensely how taiwan can. beef up its own defense and that we are trying every aspect rather than focusing on one item when president zine had that phone conversation with president donald trump and he often would seem to suggest that perhaps he wasn't necessarily bound by the one china policy anymore your spirits must have arisen here in taiwan because for the first time it began to seem possible that perhaps the united states was going to walk away from something
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that's been the cornerstone of the u.s. relations for forty years we are more realistic and pragmatic than thinking along the lines of we understand that the united states has a relationship with china to a minister and of course maintaining good relations with china is always one of the policy priority of the united states and we are fine with that policy because that policy has room for us to work with the united states in a few days' time president trump and president xi jinping are going to meet at the g. twenty s. taiwan is part of the current feud between washington and beijing what do you want to come out of that me. taiwan month well if you look at the high level meetings in between the united cities and china town policy or taiwan the subject of being raised by the chinese leader is almost in every all cation. but the response from
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the u.s. decision makers is almost always the same. abide by its one china policy and if taiwan becomes the topic in their discussion i'm sure president trump or senior officials in the united states is going to come up with a similar statement at the moment china is led by possibly the most powerful leaders since chairman mao do you think he wants to be the chinese president the brings taiwan back into the fold because given the level of intimidation the wargames that have been going on in the taiwan straits that seems to be what we're heading towards. possible but i think that's a possible. throughout the world you know what chairman thinking about if i were to put myself in his shoes you know i would have difficult times in
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understanding why taiwan should be a priority in his policy look at the regional situation inside china. this week years problem that he needs to deal with there's a problem in the that he's has to deal with and you know the catholics are being seen by him as the one who is capable of doing the organisation and therefore he needs to use a lot of force in the suppressing the freedom of religion in china and other than that the more important factor is a slowing economy slowing economy means social instability into an authoritarian country that might be the most difficult to maintain the legitimacy of that government and therefore disciplined before president xi to warry about in his relations with japan it's not good relations with korea might not be good you know this attention in south china sea there's a whole relations for him to manage with that relation with the united states and
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the. or he has so many problems to deal with and if if he wants to you know overcome the taiwanese issue that might put less. important issue on his plate imbibe for him what keeps you awake at night. the most difficult thing side told you. my position is china trying to interfere in our relations with the rest of the world. don't keep your weight on does not train. our relations with that diplomatic ilyse that is something that we need to continue to trade sure and we continue to watch out for to prevent china from having the. opportunity of grabbing them away from taiwan and we also worry about china us actions against how once participation in the international one of the nations you
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know we continue to try to push through our. or membership in the some major international organizations and china is making it very difficult for us but my job is to tell the international community that the rights of the twenty three million people here in taiwan deserve to be recognized by the international community if a small country can be repressed and it isn't war tilse organization the hills right of the town and see people should be recognized by the international community as well you know if a small countries can be represented in even international civil war if you're going to zation the rights of the taiwanese people should be recognized as well if a cross country crime is very important to every country i want should not be left out to the interpol and therefore this is something that we continue to advocate and that war motivate myself to educate to the international community and you'll
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keep up your efforts to try to rejoin the united nations i will continue to advocate that you know the united nations is. organized or formed based on the concept that every country should be reburied senate in the united nations and will continue to. try to. push the goal all for being part of the united nations but before we can be a member of the united nations you know there are practical ways for taiwan to be able to make contributions for example impractical and as asians like what i see below you and it's. w.h.o. it's even difficult for us to make a contribution about what is important to seek opportunities for taiwan to be able to make contributions to the e.u. and system and just so our views around the world understand your saying taiwan is a country yes of course. we have
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a president that is democratically elected and i just so see that. nung. state or none country that has the president and we also have a parliament that is also a democratically elected and we have our own currency system and we have the military and we also have a ministry of foreign affairs that issue the passport and that is being recognized by the international community and taiwan is a country just like all other countries in the world and what name should it be at the united nations. we are not getting into that right now i want to know is the republic of china and i think this is what the people here are used to but of course taiwan is source all being cold taiwan. the people here in taiwan are not discussing what kind of name timelines should use to enter the united nation we are
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trying to participate but we are not trying to seek membership at this moment. joseph we thank you very much thank you. i. once held in one of australia's toughest detention centers now a world renowned surgeon want to win his followers dr moon. as returns to his hometown baghdad to give up beauties the hope of walking in here on out is zero. we understand the differences and the similarities of cultures across the world and . so no matter where you call home al-jazeera will bring in the news and current
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affairs that matter to you. al-jazeera. and i'm fully back to bo with a look at our main stories here on al-jazeera russia's president vladimir putin has arrived in buenos aires for the g. twenty summits he landed just a few minutes ago is day one of the annual gathering of the world's twenty richest economies in argentina's capital a major new tensions with russia over ukraine and the u.s. trade dispute with china meanwhile leaders of the united states mexico and canada assignee a new trade agreement on the sidelines of the g. twenty meeting.

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