President Ma Ying-jeou met on the afternoon of September 6 with a delegation headed by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who continues to serve as a Member of the House of Representatives. The president, on behalf of the government and people of the ROC, extended a cordial welcome to Mr. Abe and his delegation on their visit to Taiwan.
The president noted that this marks the 12th group of visitors from Japan that he has met with this year, bringing to 90 the total number of delegations from Japan that he has met with since taking office in May 2008. This frequent interaction, he said, attests to the extremely close relations between the two countries. In May of this year, the government inaugurated the Yoichi Hatta Memorial Park at the Wushantou Reservoir in Tainan City. Many members of Japan's National Diet were invited to attend the opening ceremonies to help us commemorate this Japanese engineer who made such a major contribution to the infrastructure here, he said. The president added that he was delighted by the turnout, and that the event helped to further bolster friendship between the two sides.
President Ma mentioned that the ROC government donated NT$100 million immediately after Japan was hit by an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster on March 11 this year, and the Taiwan public enthusiastically donated another NT$6.5 billion. This constituted the greatest level of generosity by the Taiwan public ever in response to a disaster overseas, the president pointed out. Then Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan specially thanked Taiwan for its assistance in a public letter. In addition, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) President Sadakazu Tanigaki asked LDP General Council Chairperson Yuriko Koike to visit Taiwan on his behalf to thank Taiwan on behalf of the opposition party in Japan. President Ma stated that Taiwan remembers the generosity of its friends from Japan in the wake of the September 21, 1999 earthquake that ravaged parts of central Taiwan as well as the devastating floods and landslides caused by Typhoon Morakot in southern and eastern Taiwan in 2009. The recent response by Taiwan to Japan's disasters was merely repaying a friend's favor, and was the least we could do.
The president commented that over the past three-plus years, he has strived to promote cooperation and interaction between the private industrial sectors of the two countries. Concrete results have been achieved from this work, he said, pointing to R&D projects involving the high-tech sector and industrial cooperation. The president also said that on July 14 of this year, Taiwan and Japan jointly announced the "Taiwan-Japan Friendship Initiative," which aims to strengthen interaction in such areas as tourism, youth exchange, academia, and agricultural products. The president noted that both sides each year air new ideas on how to expand bilateral relations, and he is confident that if this trend continues, bilateral ties will certainly become even stronger.
President Ma remarked that Representative Abe last year attended the ceremony marking the commencement of flights between Taipei's Songshan Airport and Tokyo's Haneda Airport. At the time, he and Representative Abe exchanged opinions on relations between Taiwan and Japan. On this visit, Representative Abe is attending the International Symposium on the Regional Security of the Asia-Pacific and Peace in the Taiwan Strait, which demonstrates the importance that Representative Abe places on these issues, the president said. President Ma added that this year marks the ROC's centenary and that the government has planned major celebrations to mark National Day on October 10. He welcomed Representative Abe and the other visitors to come back to Taiwan to join in that celebration next month.
The delegation was accompanied by Japan Interchange Association Chief Representative Tadashi Imai and Taiwan's Association of East Asian Relations chairman Peng Run-tsu (彭榮次) to the Presidential Office to meet President Ma. Also attending the meeting was National Security Council Secretary-General Hu Wei-jen (胡為真).