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Change Your Life! |
Top posts in Taiwan's new government filled |
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April 22, 2000 TAIPEI, APR 21 (AP) - The list of top Cabinet members in Taiwan's new goverment was announced Friday, a lineu heavy with technocrats and academics who will be key in the push to improve relations with rival China and clean up corruption.
One of the most important posts was given to Tsai Ying-wen, an expert on international trade who will head the Mainland Affairs Council, which handles China policy.
Tsai, who could be on the front line in possible talks with Beijing, may have been tapped for her experience in helping to negotiate Taiwan's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
Taiwan and China are expected to enter the organization that regulates global trade. As WTO members, both sides will have to negotiate lifting five-decade-old trade barriers.
The 40-member Cabinet, picked together by President-elect Chen Shui-bian and Premier-designate Tang Fei, includes several members of the Nationalist Party, defeated by Chen in last month's vote. Tang, the current defense minister, is a Nationalist.
Chen's small Democratic Progressive Party also won several appointments. DPP Secretary-general Yu Shyi-kun was named vice premier and lawmaker Yeh Chu-lan will be transportation minister.
DPP lawmaker Chen Ting-nan will be the justice minister, responsible for helping Chen keep his promise to clean up graft.
But many other posts were assigned to independents and academics in keeping with Chen's promise to establish a "government for all the people."
Another scholar, Yang Ming University President Tseng Chih-lang, was named education minister.
In announcements made earlier, Tien Hung-mao, an academic and policy adviser of retiring President Lee Teng-hui, will be the new foreign minister. Foreign Minister Chen Chien-jen, a Nationalist, will be Taiwan's representative, or de facto ambassador to the United States.
Chen Shui-bian's small party is a novice in foreign, China and defense affairs. Naming Nationalists or scholars to the key posts was also an apparent attempt to allay fears that Chen might want to promote Taiwan's formal independence from the China.
Chen and the DPP favors Taiwan's formal break from China, but the president-elect and his party have since softened their stance.
Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949. Beijing has threatened to use force against the island if it declares formal independence.
Shea Jia-dong, deputy governor of the Central Bank, was named the finance minister, and the economics minister will be Lin Shin-yee, vice chairman of China Motor Corp.
Six Cabinet posts, including head of the Council for Economic and Development Planning and the health minister, have not been filled because several Nationalist officials have rejected Chen's offers.
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