The recent detention of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) son-in-law has caused a ripple in Chinese society, with many voices there expressing "envy" of Taiwan's democracy, a Japanese daily reported yesterday.
An article in the Sankei Shimbun said the People's Daily News and the Xinhua news agency had reported the detention of Chao Chien-ming (趙建銘) on suspicion of insider stock trading with the aim of letting the Chinese people know how "corrupt" Taiwan's society is.
However, the reports had the opposite effect.
Many Chinese readers said they were "impressed" with the "true democracy" that they saw in reading about Chao's detention and about the recall motion initiated by pan-blue camp legislators to recall President Chen, the Sankei reported.
Many messages about Taiwan's "enviable" democracy and China's "true decay" appeared on Chinese chat rooms on the Internet in the days after the reports.
One Chinese citizen wrote that "in China, even the son-in-law of a village leader would not be arrested if he were to commit the same crime as Chao did."
"None of the children of high-ranking officials have been detained for insider trading or other kinds of corruption," he wrote.
The Sankei report also said that Beijing University had planned to invite Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅), who made the initial allegations about Chao, to give a speech to "help ignite an anti-corruption fire in China."
Chinese authorities, however, later decided not to allow Chiu to visit for fear that such a speech would have an "undesirable" impact on Chinese society, Sankei reported.
Chiu, who continues to appear on TV talk shows at home to make allegations against members of the first family, noted that he doesn't think that Chen would use his powers to deprive him of his freedom of speech.
Chiu's remarks have been spread online by Chinese Internet surfers, the Sankei reported.
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
STRAIT OF HORMUZ: In the case of a prolonged blockade by Iran, Taiwan would look to sources of LNG outside the Middle East, including Australia and the US Taiwan would not have to ration power due to a shortage of natural gas, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, after reports that the Strait of Hormuz was closed amid the conflict in the Middle East. The government has secured liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies for this month and contingency measures are in place if the conflict extends into next month, Kung told lawmakers. Saying that 25 percent of Taiwan’s natural gas supplies are from Qatar, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) asked about the situation in light of the conflict. There would be “no problems” with
RSS