Speaking in Xian on the first day of his trip to China, People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) said that he was moved to finally be able to set foot on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
"Everyone knows that the Strait between the two shores is only 100-odd kilometers wide, but it is moving for myself and [Chen] Wan-shui [陳萬水, Soong's wife] that it took us more than 50 years to cross the very narrow divide that is the Taiwan Strait," Soong said after arriving in Xian yesterday afternoon.
He was greeted at the airport by Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office director Chen Yunlin (
PHOTO: AP
Speaking at Xian's airport upon arrival, Soong talked of his hopes for the trip and emphasized the "similar interests" shared by citizens of China and Taiwan as "common descendants of Yan Di."
Legend says that Yan Di was the father of Chinese agriculture and one of the first ancestors of the "Chinese people."
"I chose Xian as our first stop in China for two reasons. First, to look for the origin of our bloodline, and second, to build a bridge to the future," Soong said.
All Taiwanese, whether they are Hakka, Mainlander or Hoklo, trace their bloodlines to China, and thus were all Chinese people, he said.
In a play on words, Soong said that he hoped his journey would establish a "fourth direct link" -- a connection between the spirits of all "descendants of Yan Di."
"Many supporters asked me whether or not I would be able to facilitate the establishment of the `three direct links.' I've told them it is more important that I establish the `fourth link,' the link between the spirits on both sides of the Taiwan Strait," Soong said.
After visiting the Huangdi Mausoleum today, Soong is scheduled to fly to Nanjing.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
RSS