A recent announcement by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) that trips made by civil servants to China do not constitute overseas travel drew fire from lawmakers across party lines yesterday.
“[RDEC] Minister Jiang Yi-huah [江宜樺] has to resign over an announcement that sells out Taiwan,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) said as a group of DPP lawmakers lodged a protest at the RDEC offices yesterday.
The protest was prompted by a Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) report yesterday that said on April 1 the commission posted an announcement on the government’s intranet informing government agencies that “given that going to the ‘mainland area’ is not tantamount to ‘going abroad,’” civil servants are no longer required to register on the commission’s Web site. Local government chiefs, however, would still have to submit reports should they visit China, it added.
Jiang did not meet with the DPP lawmakers yesterday.
“We will come back anytime and find you ... unless you [Jiang] plan to hide from us for the rest of your life,” Lee said.
The DPP lawmakers shouted slogans such as “Jiang Yi-huah, step down” and “Taiwan is our country,” before leaving the RDEC offices.
DPP Legislator Hsueh Ling (薛凌) slammed the announcement as an attempt to obscure civil servants’ sense of national identity and as “a precursor to eventual unification [with China].”
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) also urged the commission not to “mistake a foreign country as our country” because “the Republic of China is an independent sovereign state.”
“In accordance with the legislature’s budget review and the the Act Governing the Relations between People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例), trips to China are still considered trips abroad,” she said.
In response, RDEC Deputy Minister Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) said yesterday that the announcement was only posted on the intranet because its technicians were testing a new system for civil servants to use when uploading reports on trips to China, as opposed to the existing one for civil servants for uploading reports on other overseas travel.
We find it regrettable that the announcement, not a finalized one, was distorted by the media, who quoted a phrase or two out of context on purpose to make it into a unification-independence issue,” Yeh said.
In view of increasing cross-strait exchanges involving civil servants, Yeh said the commission was planning to separate reporting by civil servants for their trips to China and to other countries on two separate systems.
The RDEC considered it necessary not to make public the contents of some of the reports on civil servants’ trips to China, Yeh said.
“It is still in the review stage,” he said.
Regulations state that when civil servants take an overseas trip, they are required to complete a report when they return and the reports are then made public online.
Regulations on government cross-strait activities state that civil servants are required to submit their itineraries and travel details to their superiors and the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), but are not required to upload the information online.
Commenting on the controversy, MAC Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said yesterday that the phrasing in the announcement that “going to the ‘mainland area’ is not tantamount to ‘going abroad’” should not be blown up into a big issue because “cross-strait relations are a special case.”
Liu said that was the reason why a law called the Act Governing Relations Between People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area was originally passed.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS