To the surprise of assembled journalists, Premier Frank Hsieh (
"With more and more outstanding and remarkable achievements by Taiwanese athletes, I think it is time for us to go for the application," Hsieh said. "To host the Olympic Games would be a great promotion for Taiwan, anyway."
Hsieh made his remarks during the opening speech for the weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday morning.
Speaking on behalf of Hsieh, Cabinet Spokesman Cho Jung-tai (
"We are definitely capable of organizing an international game like this," Cho said. "Taiwan is growing stronger and stronger in every aspect, including sports. More and more Taiwanese athletes, such as Los Angeles Dodger Chen Chin-feng (
Cho said that Taiwan is a small country, but it is definitely capable of organizing such an international event. Taiwanese people will prove this during the 2008 World Games in Kaohsiung, he said.
However, Cho also said that although Taiwanese athletes have proved to the world that Taiwanese people are eligible to host international games, basic construction on infrastructure such as gyms, pools and tracks has yet to begin and must be hurried up.
"We must have a dream, and we must be confident in ourselves that our dream can be carried out, sooner or later," Cho said.
The spokesman suggested that Taiwan shall organize more international games between 2008 and 2013 for promotion purposes, since the host of the 2020 olympics will not be decided until 2013.
Cho did not clearly state which city in Taiwan would be nominated to the make the application.
"Although Kaohsiung will be the city for the 2008 World Games, it is not necessary to have the same city represent Taiwan in the application to the International Olympic Committee to host the 2020 Olympic Games," Cho said.
"Every city in Taiwan has the chance," the spokesman said. "I would encourage everybody to do their best to fight for the representation of Taiwan and go for the 2020 Olympic Games."
To become a winner of the competition to host the Olympic Games, the city must come from a country whose athletes are remarkable and whose economic system is healthy, Hsieh said.
"As long as we keep trying, there must be a chance for us," Hsieh said. "If we care more about sports, we will be able to do it."
Also see story:
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B