The Presidential Office confirmed yesterday that the president received a letter from former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) deputy minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) defending himself against an accusation that he had leaked national secrets, before Chang issued a statement on Sunday last week that suggested he had been forced to resign.
Presidential Office spokesperson Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國) said that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had indeed received a letter from Chang, but “as the case has now been put under judicial investigation, the office would not comment on the matter.”
The news about the letter initially came to public attention in the same way many rumors about Chang have spread in the past week — from unnamed sources passing information to the media; this time it was to the Chinese-language Apple Daily.
The paper quoted “a person who knows about the inside information” as saying that Chang was lying when he said he was unclear of the reason he was asked to step down.
Chang was said to have sent a letter to Ma on the morning of Aug. 17, before he issued a statement to the public intimating that he was forced to resign rather than quitting for “family reasons,” as the Executive Yuan said on Aug. 16.
In the letter, according to the anonymous person quoted by the Apple Daily, Chang wrote that MAC Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) told him that he was suspected of leaking information to China when they met on Aug. 14.
Chang said on Thursday that Wang had not told him about the suspicion when Wang asked him to leave the post and offered him a chairman’s role at a state-run company, and nodded when asked whether his assertion meant Wang was lying.
The unnamed person was quoted as saying that the president, not happy about Chang’s conspicuous moves, turned the letter over to the MAC to “restore the truth,” and the MAC later handed the letter to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
The Apple Daily also reported on Friday that the tip-off accusing Chang of leaking information came from a political heavyweight with European and US training.
The Chinese-language United Daily News said an “informed person from the top echelon” has “seriously repudiated the rumor.”
The unnamed official was quoted as saying that the rumormonger had “evil intentions,” as the rumor intended to drag the US into the issue, which would then become a show pitting the US against China.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) on Friday asked Taiwanese media “not to make irresponsible and untrue guesses, lest the cross-strait relationship be negatively impacted.”
Meanwhile, the Global Times, an offshoot of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship paper the People’s Daily, said on Friday in its editorial that it is a “far-fetched” allegation calling the top representative for cross-strait negotiation “a red spy.”
The paper cited several Chinese academics’ opinions about the controversy, who all believed that “the crisis was jointly caused by Ma Ying-jeou’s lack of internal control, Chang’s strong personality and Taiwan’s chaotic political environment,” and disagreed with the “red spy” accusation.
“Even if China was to have spies in Taiwan,” the editorial said light-heartedly, “Chang would not be a fitting selection because his public values — Chang’s anti-Taiwanese-independence stance and enthusiasm for the cross-strait ‘small three links’ — are higher than his going undercover.”
‘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
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying