The conciliatory policy with China adopted by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has not terminated the tug-of-war over overseas Taiwanese, Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission Minister Wu Ying-yih (吳英毅) said yesterday.
“It’s true that mainland China has actively pandered to overseas Taiwanese compatriots by using its economic power. The mainland even used its strength to reach out to compatriots [favoring the Democratic Progressive Party rather than the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)],” Wu said.
China has wooed overseas Taiwanese holding US nationality by inviting them to the Shanghai Expo and granting them “more than landing visa treatment,” Wu said.
Wu was responding to KMT Legislator Liao Wan-ru (廖婉如) at the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
“Mainland China is very generous to overseas Chinese compatriots with money in comparison with [services] the [Taiwanese] government provides to Taiwanese compatriots. If this situation continues, I really worry that compatriots will switch allegiance to mainland China,” Liao said.
Saying that he sympathized with Liao’s concerns, Wu said that the commission could strengthen ties with overseas Taiwanese to win hearts and minds.
KMT Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) asked why there has been less investment in Taiwan by overseas Taiwanese than expected this year.
Aside from the global economic crisis, a major factor affecting expats’ decisions to invest in Taiwan was that they were unsure in the first half of the year if the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) would be signed, Wu said.
“The ECFA has become the best selling point for inviting overseas compatriots to return to Taiwan. I believe that investment by overseas compatriots next year will be higher than in previous years,” Wu said.
In other news, Chinese-language Next Magazine yesterday reported that a top Taiwanese prosecutor probing several major scandals has been targeted by cyber-attacks from China.
Chinese hackers have obtained confidential information from the home computer of a chief prosecutor at the Taipei district prosecutor’s office surnamed Huang (黃) on at least four top cases, the magazine said.
Among the cases was that of an alleged spy for China in Taiwan’s Presidential Office as well as a diplomatic scandal implicating former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) right-hand man Chiou I-jen (邱義仁), it said.
The weekly cited unnamed sources as saying that the National Security Bureau first spotted the cyber-attacks in June and instructed that Huang’s computer be reprogrammed to stem any further information leaks.
The prosecutor’s office was not immediately available for comment.
The report came after the bureau said on Monday that in the year to October, it was targeted by Chinese hackers in 598,000 attacks, or 12 percent of a total of 4.99 million attacks. Six in 10 attacks came from within Taiwan.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AFP
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