Taiwan opened a representative office in Sapporo yesterday, its first new representative office in Japan in 30 years.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) described the opening of the office as a “breakthrough in Japan-Taiwan relations.”
Wang, along with dignitaries from Japan and Taiwan, attended a ceremony marking the opening of the office, the first since a representative office was opened in Yokohama in 1979.
PHOTO: CNA
Wang said the move was a promising development in bilateral ties and would be “a shot in the arm for tourism exchanges.”
He said that since relatively few residents of Hokkaido, of which Sapporo is the capital city, visited Taiwan, he hoped the opening of the Sapporo office would help encourage more people from the northern Japanese island to vacation in Taiwan.
“The hospitable Taiwanese people welcome Japanese visitors with open arms,” Wang said.
Addressing the ceremony, Hokkaido Governor Harumi Takahashi said Taiwan is very important to Hokkaido in terms of tourism.
“The opening of the Taiwan office in Sapporo will help facilitate Taiwanese tourists’ visits here and further bolster bilateral exchanges,” she said.
She said authorities from Hokkaido’s Kushiro sub-prefecture would give a pair of Japanese-bred red-crowned cranes to the Taipei Zoo as a token of friendship.
Shinichi Sakamoto, head of a Hokkaido tourism organization, said his organization would cooperate more closely with Taiwan’s office in Sapporo to get more people in Hokkaido interested in sightseeing in Taiwan.
Sakamoto said he believed most Hokkaido residents who had visited Taiwan would be happy to repeat their trips there, attracted by Taiwan’s delicious food, good tea and convenient high-speed railway system.
Also attending the opening were Taiwan’s top representative to Japan, John Feng (馮寄台), and Atsushi Hatanaka, chairman of the Japan Interchange Association, the de facto Japanese embassy authorized to handle civilian exchanges with Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic relations.
The Sapporo office is the sixth Taiwanese liaison office established in Japan, after offices in Tokyo, Osaka, Okinawa, Fukuoka and Yokohama.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS