The Mainland Affairs Council (
Tsao on Sunday led a small delegation of Matsu officials to the Chinese coastal town of Mawei, located 60km from Taiwan's tiny military outpost, to sign an agreement with local officials strengthening economic and personal exchanges between the two sides (加強民間交流與合作協議).
Under the "small three links" (
The council released a statement yesterday saying that although it had not authorized the move, it approved of Tsao's actions as they "were a people-to-people initiative to promote the `small three links.'" Indeed, Tsao asserted that as a private undertaking there was no need to seek the approval of the council, which charts the government's China policy, saying only the approval of the Chinese side to the agreement was required.
The statement stressed that it agreed to Tsao's position that he had taken the step as a representative of Matsu and not as an authorized representative of the government to help bolster ties. "The agreement was unofficial and non-governmental," said the council. "Any negotiations and their outcomes must be authorized by the council for them to have legal bearing," it said.
Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (
"This kind of spontaneous interaction between the two sides are not considered official and therefore have no legal bearing," Tsai said.
However, Tsai stressed that official negotiations on cross-strait trade matters must be conducted by the central government unless it authorizes other parties to do so on its behalf.
Besides media speculation on whether Tsao's actions usurped the authority of the central government, signing of the agreement further generated headlines due to its taking place under the "one China" banner.
But Tsao dismissed suggestions of a cave-in to the "one China" which the new government refuses to recognize. "The principle has long been part of the nation's constitution and many agreements signed between private groups across the strait are done so under this principle," Tsao said.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
France is developing domestic production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries with an eye on industrial independence, but Asian experts are proving key in launching operations. In the Verkor factory outside the northern city of Dunkirk, which was inaugurated on Thursday, foreign specialists, notably from South Korea and Malaysia, are training the local staff. Verkor is the third battery gigafactory to open in northern France in a region that has become known as “Battery Valley.” At the Automotive Energy Supply Corp (AESC) factory near the city of Douai, where production has been under way for several months, Chinese engineers and technicians supervise French recruits. “They
RSS