Ma praises strength of Taiwan-UK ties

2015/09/24

President Ma Ying-jeou said Sept. 22 that Taiwan-U.K. relations are going from strength to strength, with further improvement expected across a spectrum of areas.

“Exchanges between Taiwan and the U.K. have seen considerable growth in recent years,” Ma said. “This underscores the effectiveness of efforts invested by both sides in boosting trade and people-to-people exchanges.”

Ma made the remarks while receiving a seven-member delegation from the All-Party Parliamentary British-Taiwanese Group led by Lord Faulkner at the Presidential Office in Taipei City.

According to the president, the U.K. was the first major country in the West to grant visa-waiver privileges to ROC nationals in 2009, which helped boost the number of Taiwan arrivals from 52,000 in 2008 to over 100,000 in 2013.

“It is also the fourth leading destination for Taiwan students seeking overseas education, and offers our young people the opportunity to live and work under the Youth Mobility Scheme,” he said.

Last year, the U.K. was Taiwan’s third largest trading partner in Europe, with bilateral trade reaching US$6 billion. In March, Britain surpassed the Netherlands as Taiwan’s top investment destination in Europe.

“Such a robust partnership is further reflected in the rebranding of the British Trade and Cultural Office as British Office in May,” Ma said, adding that the two countries share a similar approach to resource sharing and regional collaboration, as evidenced by the East China Sea Peace Initiative he proposed in 2012 and Britain’s stake in North Sea oil production.

As this year marks the 70th anniversary of the nation’s victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the president took the opportunity to commemorate the ROC-U.K. partnership during World War II, especially in present-day Myanmar.

The joint action was chronicled in such books as “No Mandalay, No Maymyo” and “Chinese Save Brits—in Burma (Battle of Yenangyaung)” by Gerald Fitzpatrick, a retired British army captain who fought in the Southeast Asian theater of the global conflagration.

Ma said the Cairo Declaration of 1943, following a previous conference held by late President Chiang Kai-shek, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is further proof of the wartime alliance. In fact, it was Churchill who included the clause in the declaration for the return of Penghu to the ROC, he added.

“We look forward to further building on this long history of cooperation and friendship by taking two-way ties to new heights.”

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=237000&ctNode=2194&mp=9)