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Family members of slain businessmen go to China

Five family members of two Taiwanese businessmen murdered in China left for Hong Kong yesterday en route to Guangdong Province.

A disgruntled factory worker in Dongguan fatally stabbed the two men on Monday, leaving a third Taiwanese critically injured.

Family members have complained that they hadn’t received any assistance from the government.

However, Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) spokesman Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章) said yesterday that the foundation learned of the incident on Monday night and immediately activated the reporting mechanism with China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).

Maa said the foundation empathized with the families and would continue to offer help.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said the government should discuss security for Taiwanese businesspeople working in China during cross-strait talks to prevent a similar situation.

Although Taiwan and China have held three rounds of cross-strait talks, the issue of personal security for Taiwanese businesspeople and protection for Taiwanese investment were never mentioned, DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said.

Cheng said the government was only pretending to care about Taiwanese working in China, because the security and interest of the Taiwanese had never been its priority.

There are around 500 Taiwanese businesspeople reportedly being held in Chinese prisons and more than 400 cases of deaths or missing people, Cheng said, adding that because the Chinese judicial system is backward and not transparent, the families of those imprisoned didn’t know where their loved ones were.

The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and the SEF offered little help to those caught in China’s legal system, he said.

Meanwhile, Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Fu Don-cheng (傅棟成) expressed regret over the legislature’s failure to pass amendments to a cross-strait law on double taxation, saying there shouldn’t be a double standard.

The council also issued a statement noting that the government has signed bilateral tax exemption agreements with 16 countries since 1981 and taxation agreements on air and sea transportation with 13 countries and regions.

All these agreements had been approved by the executive branch and ratified by the legislature, the council said. The statement said if the cross-strait revisions failed to pass the legislature, Taipei and Beijing would not have a legal basis to negotiate on preventing double taxation. The legislature began its summer recess on Tuesday.

The statement also dismissed media reports claiming that council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) had pressured DPP lawmakers during Tuesday’s cross-party negotiation on the bill.

In other news, the SEF dismissed speculation yesterday that the fourth round of talks between foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) would be held sooner than anticipated, either next month or in August.

Maa said he had not been notified about the time and place of the fourth meeting, except he knew it would be held in Taiwan.

The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported the talks would be pushed forward so both sides could expedite the signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), and that Beijing said it would agree to a meeting next month or in August if Taiwan was ready.

Fu dismissed the report as “groundless,” saying both sides have yet to launch the negotiations on the next round of talks. The three agreements signed during the last Chiang-Chen meeting have yet to take effect and financial memorandums of understanding have yet to be signed, he said.

Both sides have agreed the next round of talks — on fisheries cooperation, agricultural product testing, inspection and certification cooperation and prevention of double taxation — would be held in Taiwan this year.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY RICH CHANG
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