I am an American lawyer representing plaintiffs in the Asia Pacific Broadband Telecom cases. Today, we won a jurisdiction battle against Wang You-theng (王又曾) and his wife in the Superior Court of Los Angeles.
Wang claimed that plaintiffs of Asia Pacific Broadband Telecom should go back to Taiwan to sue him there. Since all the plaintiffs are from Taiwan, all the evidence is in Chinese and all the alleged illegal transactions happened in Taiwan, Wang said, the California courts would be unduly burdened by taking on these cases.
The judges took into consideration that Wang was personally served in the US, that his wife is a US citizen and that they own real estate and banks in California, and decided that justice could not be served if Wang is sued in Taiwan where Asia Pacific Broadband Telecom petitioned the court to declare him bankrupt.
Wang was released because, among other things, an Immigration and Naturalization Service detainee cannot be detained for more than six months, and his lawyer swore that Wang suffers from serious medical conditions, which included fainting twice during his detention. Wang is 81 years old, after all.
Wang's release is welcome news to my clients for the following reasons:
One, Wang now has no justifiable reason not to appear in court.
Two, Wang Chin She-ying (王金世英), Wang You-theng's wife and codefendant, also has no justifiable reason not to appear.
Three, the trial date can now be settled at an earlier date to protect Wang's evidence and the rights of plaintiffs to be compensated.
I received many calls after the news of Wang's release was announced. My reply was: "Please take your seat. Knowing Wang, the show has just started."
Life is getting harder for alleged criminals who used to have their cake in Taiwan and eat it in the US. Not so any more: Ask Wang You-theng, and he may tell you.
Chiu Chang
Taipei
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past