Pineapple politics: Beijing-friendly Taiwanese mayor Han Kuo-yu comes bearing fruit, but won’t touch prickly cross-strait issues
- Possible presidential candidate brokers deals to import HK$628 million worth of agricultural products from Kaohsiung
- Kuomintang veteran also went to Beijing’s liaison office for meeting with city’s top mainland official
Politics or pineapples? The new Beijing-friendly mayor of Taiwan’s third-largest city deftly avoided prickly questions about cross-strait issues on a rare visit to Hong Kong on Friday.
Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu, a star of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party, instead put the focus on ramping up trade between the two sides, expressing shock that about one-fourth of Hong Kong’s total import of agricultural products came from Japan rather than the self-ruled island.
“In contrast, products from Taiwan account for only 3.6 per cent of Hong Kong’s total import [of produce]. I think it’s reasonable to raise the percentage to 10, even 12 [per cent],” he said, referring to trade figures he said he learned from Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor during a lunch at Government House.
“There is much room for growth. I hope that at least there can be more exchanges between the two cities, and that includes cruise ships. Can Hong Kong cruise ships stop at Kaohsiung?”
Han’s remarks came after a signing ceremony for eight trade deals between agriculture and fisheries groups from Kaohsiung and their counterparts in Hong Kong and mainland China. Yang Liuchang, the Taiwan affairs chief in Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, also attended the ceremony.
Han later went to the liaison office and met Wang Zhimin, the city’s top mainland official. During the meeting, Wang spoke of the “great achievements and progress” Hong Kong had made since its handover from British rule in 1997, according to a press release on Friday night, along with a photo of Han and Wang shaking hands.
The historic visit drew fire from the pro-democracy camp, but Han later said the two-hour meeting was arranged by the Hong Kong government and “purely for dinner”.