The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday came under fire over stickers it designed identifying the wearer as a Taiwanese national and which it planned to give to Taiwanese in Vietnam in a bid to protect them from being attacked by anti-China protesters.
The stickers bear the message: “I am Taiwanese. I am from Taiwan” written in Vietnamese against a yellow silhouette of the island with “I am from Taiwan” repeated underneath in English.
Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) said the ministry’s missions in Vietnam will give Taiwanese businesspeople there the stickers so “Vietnamese could easily distinguish them and their firms from their Chinese counterparts.”
Photo: MOFA
According to the ministry, out of the 2,287 Taiwan-funded firms in Vietnam, 669 are located in Binh Duong Province and 331 in Dong Nai Province, the sites of the violent protests against Beijing’s move to put an oil rig close to the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea, which are claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and China.
The plan to hand out stickers to the estimated 40,000 Taiwanese in Vietnam drew harsh criticism from opposition lawmakers.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said the ministry’s stickers could put Taiwanese in danger because Vietnamese are taught that Taiwan is part of China, so what is needed is to clarify that Taiwanese are not from China.
DPP Legislator Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said Taiwanese firms and factories had been “inadvertently affected” by the anti-China sentiment in Vietnam because school textbooks teach pupils that “Taiwan is a province of China.”
The ministry should demand that Hanoi allow companies owned or funded by Taiwanese to display the Republic of China (ROC) flag to protect themselves from anti-Chinese violence, much as South Korean companies have done, DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said.
Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Chou Ni-an (周倪安) asked the ministry to replace the slogan on the sticker with “I am ROC citizen. I am from the ROC.”
“You favor the ROC over Taiwan, don’t you? So why did you choose to use the designation ‘Taiwan’ this time?” Chou said.
Lin responded that despite Hanoi’s adherence to the “one China” policy and the way in which the Taiwan-China relationship is explained in schools in Vietnam, the majority of Vietnamese have a clear understanding that there is no connection between Taiwan-owned firms and China because Taiwanese have been investing in the country for more than 20 years.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the