Taipei has lodged a complaint with Vietnam and demanded a correction after a lawmaker produced a copy of a Vietnamese temporary residence card issued by Hanoi to a Taiwanese that was stamped “Taiwan Province of China,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
“The ministry spoke with Nguyen Ba Cu, director of the Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei, by telephone to express the government’s serious concern and to protest the matter,” ministry spokesman James Chang (章計平) told reporters.
While questioning Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) at the legislature, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) showed a copy of the document, saying: “Visas issued by Vietnam to Taiwanese state that Taiwan is a province of China.”
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
It was subsequently determined that the document Chen said was a “working visa” given to her by a Taiwanese working in Vietnam was in fact a temporary residence card, in which “Taiwan Province of China” was stamped in the space left for applicants to write their nationality or passport number.
The temporary residence card was issued on Dec. 12, 2008, and was valid for three years.
Chen said the holder of the document did not initially notice the reference to “Taiwan Province of China” when he renewed the document in 2008, but the holder was sure that the reference to his nationality in previous documents stated “Republic of China [ROC].”
“After noticing the change, he said he questioned Vietnamese authorities and was told the change was made with the consent of Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Chen said.
The ministry denies the allegation.
Chang said the ministry had been informed by the Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei that visas issued by Vietnam to holders of ROC passports only contain the word “Taiwan,” and that only visa exemption certificates issued to Taiwanese spouses or children of Vietnamese citizens used the designation “Taiwan Province of China” when referring to nationality.
The ministry has asked for corrections to be made to the visa exemption certificates, Chang said.
The ministry received a Vietnamese official yesterday afternoon, but details of the meeting were not available as of press time.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
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
RSS