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.”
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
AIR ALERT: China’s reservation of airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea could be an attempt to test the US’ response ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, the NSB head said China’s attempts to infiltrate Taiwan are systematic, planned and targeted, with activity shifting from recruiting mid-level military officers to rank-and-file enlisted personnel, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) integrates national security, intelligence operations and “united front” efforts into a dense network to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage in Taiwan, Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. It uses specific networks to screen targets through exchange activities and recruiting local collaborators to establish intelligence-gathering organizations, he said. China is also shifting who it targets to lower-ranking military personnel,
RSS