German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has corrected its misrepresentation of comments made by President Ma Ying-joeu. A Deutsche Welle report mistakenly quoted Ma as saying that he is willing to learn from the experience of the East and West Germany in their handling of bilateral relations while moving toward eventual unification in 1990.
In the corrected version of the report updated on Thursday, Deutsche Welle added a note to clarify that what Ma said in the interview was that he is willing to learn from the experience of East Germany and West Germany in the handling of their relations.
The Presidential Office said on Thursday that during the interview, President Ma made it clear that cross-strait relations are different from relations between the two Germanys, meaning that Taiwan cannot emulate the German model in cross-strait relations.