President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen once again vowed to change the names of government agencies overseas and state-run enterprises during a campaign activity held in Taipei City yesterday.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"We don't have to fear China's opposition to Taiwan's reforms and changes," Chen said after praying for DPP candidates at Baoan Temple (
"In fact, China has never stopped threatening Taiwan while we conducted democratic reforms over the past few decades."
Chen said that, from the lifting of martial law and bans on establishing political parties and newspapers, to elections for the legislature and direct elections for president, China has never voiced its consent to Taiwan's changes.
"But we would never give up our transformation just because of China's intimidation," Chen said.
Meanwhile, Chen rebutted some people's argument that the state-run corporations will not make profits anymore if those businesses quit using "China" or "Chinese" in their titles, criticizing these comments as "nonsense."
"Did Wang Yung-ching's (
"Why can't we change our name?" Chen asked, pointing out that Taiwan had already successfully changed the bizarre names of Taiwan's resident office in Washington from "Coordination Council for North American Affairs" to "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US."
The Association of East Asian Relations, the representative office in Japan, was also changed to the "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office."
By citing a statement that Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
He emphasized that the case is the same as when Ma needed a majority in the Taipei City Council for a better administration.
Chen stressed that only when the pan-green camp wins the legislative elections could Ma have a chance to extend his political future, otherwise Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
"Just as Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou appealed to Taipei citizens as he sought for his mayoral reelection in 2002, which Ma said that since voters supported his re-election, they should also promise him a stable city council for the sake of better municipal construction," Chen said.
"So did I. I asked all of you to vote for the pan-green camps so that I could have the back-up of the legislature to continue implementing all kinds of reform," Chen said.
Also see stories:
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS