Department of Health Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) said late on Saturday that Taiwan’s sovereignty was not and would not be eclipsed during the annual meeting of the WHO from today until Friday.
Yeh, who arrived in Geneva on Saturday to attend the 62nd World Health Assembly (WHA) at the head of a 15-member delegation of Taiwanese health officials and experts, called on Taiwanese to rest assured on the question of sovereignty.
“Please don’t worry. We would take action if Taiwan’s sovereignty were at risk of being compromised,” Yeh said.
Taiwan was invited by WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) on April 28 to attend the WHA meeting as an observer under the title “The Department of Health, Chinese Taipei.”
This marked the first time in 38 years that the Republic of China (ROC) would participate in a meeting hosted by a UN agency. Taiwan will attend as the seventh observer.
Addressing CNA reporters at a souvenir shop at the Palais des Nations — the venue of the WHA meeting — Yeh lamented the fact that “there is no ROC national flag here.”
“We still have a long way to go,” he said.
Meanwhile, Yeh said the invitation to Taiwan to take part in this year’s WHA as an observer was the result of improved cross-strait relations since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came to office.
Yeh said that while it was natural for Taiwanese health officials to meet their Chinese counterparts during the five-day meeting, “I don’t see any necessity for the [Department of Health] to intentionally seek contact with Chinese delegates.”
In Taipei, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that in the section about global health on the WHO Web site, Taiwan was referred to as “China (Province of Taiwan),” which the party said made it abundantly clear that a 2005 memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between China and the WHO was in effect.
The DPP was referring to an MOU that stipulated that Taiwan could participate in the WHO’s technical meetings under the names “Taiwan, China” or “Taipei.”
DPP spokesperson Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) said that while Ma might be very pleased with Yeh’s participation at the WHA, Taiwan’s treatment on the WHO Web site “clearly shows that the approach taken to obtain observer status has undermined the sovereignty of Taiwan.”
“The government is talking a lot of nonsense,” Cheng said.
Cheng criticized the Ma administration for not seeking full WHO membership for Taiwan and deceiving Taiwanese, adding that the DPP worried that the approach used to gain WHA observer status could lead other international organizations to label Taiwan a province of China.
Cheng said the DPP advocates full WHO membership for Taiwan rather than observer status within the “one China” framework, adding that the DPP would closely watch this week’s WHA meeting for signs of attempts to denigrate Taiwan’s sovereignty.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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
‘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
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
RSS