Congratulatory Message for ROC National Day Is Not from Abe, Frank Hsieh Says Japan Didn’t Say It Was Fake

Congratulatory Message for ROC National Day Is Not from Abe, Frank Hsieh Says Japan Didn’t Say It Was Fake

Source: All Taipei News

October 9, 2019

On October 4, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Fukuoka showed, at our national day reception, a picture of a congratulatory message sent by Shinzō Abe, Japanese Prime Minister. However, Naoki Okada, Vice Cabinet Secretary, yesterday denied the news in public. Following the denial, our Office in Fukuoka issued a statement, admitting that the congratulatory message was not from the Japanese Prime Minister’s Office, so it wasn’t recorded officially.

Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) indicated that this gaffe was indeed serious, so “the government will look into the matter and handle it accordingly.”

Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), the ROC’s top representative to Japan, yesterday said that the Japanese government did not say the congratulatory message was fake, and it just said the Prime Minister didn’t send the message, adding that the Office in Fukuoka had no responsibility to report everything to him, so he knew nothing about it.

According to a news analysis carried by the China Times on October 9, our Office in Fukuoka not only overlooked the unusual wording “the Republic of China” on the message, but also failed to carefully examine which government agency sent the congratulatory message. What’s more, the Office in Fukuoka believed that the message was, indeed, sent by Shinzō Abe and Tarō Asō, Deputy Prime Minister of Japan, just because “a long-term trusted friend in Japanese political circles” transmitted the message, which was definitely not a professional judgment made by seasoned diplomats, the same analysis concluded.

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