Taiwan has decided not to participate in Expo 2015 in Milan after reviewing an Italian government proposal that it present itself as a “corporate entity” at the world fair rather than a nation, officials said yesterday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been in talks with Rome in the hopes of working out an arrangement, “but it is a pity that Italy only agreed to [our] presence as ‘Taiwan Corporate’ in the ‘corporate area,’” ministry spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) said.
According to a government source, Taiwan failed to secure a commitment from the Italian government that the nation would have a pavilion in the expo’s country area. Rome had proposed that Taiwan be placed in the corporate area.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has assessed Rome’s proposal by soliciting opinions from Taiwanese firms about how their participation would generate new business opportunities and concluded that the expected economic benefits would be “limited,” an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the matter.
They “were not enthusiastic” about the world fair, she said.
A report from Milan by television station TVBS on Monday quoted Lai Tien-fu (賴天福), chairman of the Taiwanese business association in the city, as saying that an area of about 330 ping (1,090m2) had been designated a “Taiwan corporate” pavilion near the pavilions of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Japan.
The cost of a corporate pavilion was about NT$300 million (US$9.69 million), a third of the NT$1 billion it cost Taiwan to participate in Expo 2010 in Shanghai, Lai said.
It was a shame that the government decided to shun the expo out of “national dignity and fiscal situation” concerns, Lai said.
Lai said that he filed petitions with Taiwan’s representative office in Italy and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), only to be given the cold shoulder.
Meanwhile, a report on the expo’s Web site said that the Italy-Taiwan inter-parliamentary friendship group raised a parliamentary question with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to find out why Taiwan’s participation in the expo had not yet been ensured.
The report said the parliamentary question bore the signature of Italian Senator Lucio Malan, president of the friendship group.
In his question, Malan said the Italian government was risking excluding a democratic country from the expo out of “fear of the giant, Beijing.”
The report said that Malan wanted to bring the diplomatic detente between Taipei and Beijing to Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino’s attention.
Valter Zanetta, president of the association for cultural and economic relationships between Italy and Taiwan, was quoted in the report as saying that the offer made by Rome to use the title “Taiwan corporate” was not accepted because that would imply Taiwan is a company and not a country.
According to the expo’s Web site, participants in the expo are identified as official or non-official as defined by the rules of the International Exhibitions Bureau, an intergovernmental organization created to supervise the expo.
Official participants are 144 countries and three international organizations, while non-official participants may be groups of representatives, institutions or other entities.
Given the importance of the expo’s theme, the Italian government decided in 2011 to invite all UN member states to open the doors of the expo to non-governmental organizations and companies as key stakeholders in the global debate on the challenges related to nutrition and food, it said.
DAREDEVIL: Honnold said it had always been a dream of his to climb Taipei 101, while a Netflix producer said the skyscraper was ‘a real icon of this country’ US climber Alex Honnold yesterday took on Taiwan’s tallest building, becoming the first person to scale Taipei 101 without a rope, harness or safety net. Hundreds of spectators gathered at the base of the 101-story skyscraper to watch Honnold, 40, embark on his daredevil feat, which was also broadcast live on Netflix. Dressed in a red T-shirt and yellow custom-made climbing shoes, Honnold swiftly moved up the southeast face of the glass and steel building. At one point, he stepped onto a platform midway up to wave down at fans and onlookers who were taking photos. People watching from inside
A Vietnamese migrant worker yesterday won NT$12 million (US$379,627) on a Lunar New Year scratch card in Kaohsiung as part of Taiwan Lottery Co’s (台灣彩券) “NT$12 Million Grand Fortune” (1200萬大吉利) game. The man was the first top-prize winner of the new game launched on Jan. 6 to mark the Lunar New Year. Three Vietnamese migrant workers visited a Taiwan Lottery shop on Xinyue Street in Kaohsiung’s Gangshan District (崗山), a store representative said. The player bought multiple tickets and, after winning nothing, held the final lottery ticket in one hand and rubbed the store’s statue of the Maitreya Buddha’s belly with the other,
‘NATO-PLUS’: ‘Our strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific are facing increasing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party,’ US Representative Rob Wittman said The US House of Representatives on Monday released its version of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes US$1.15 billion to support security cooperation with Taiwan. The omnibus act, covering US$1.2 trillion of spending, allocates US$1 billion for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, as well as US$150 million for the replacement of defense articles and reimbursement of defense services provided to Taiwan. The fund allocations were based on the US National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026 that was passed by the US Congress last month and authorized up to US$1 billion to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency in support of the
HIGH-TECH DEAL: Chipmakers that expand in the US would be able to import up to 2.5 times their new capacity with no extra tariffs during an approved construction period Taiwan aims to build a “democratic” high-tech supply chain with the US and form a strategic artificial intelligence (AI) partnership under the new tariffs deal it sealed with Washington last week, Taipei’s top negotiator in the talks said yesterday. US President Donald Trump has pushed Taiwan, a major producer of semiconductors which runs a large trade surplus with the US, to invest more in the US, specifically in chips that power AI. Under the terms of the long-negotiated deal, chipmakers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) that expand US production would incur a lower tariff on semiconductors or related manufacturing
RSS