The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday said it would redraft a proposed bill on monitoring cross-strait agreements in line with the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution, meaning the terms “Taiwan” and “China” would be changed to “Taiwan Area” and “Mainland Area.”
“We will submit an official caucus proposal for a bill to monitor cross-strait negotiations and agreements by the end of the month,” DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said after a meeting to prepare DPP lawmakers for the legislative session scheduled to begin today. “As for the name of the bill, we will refer to the ROC constitutional framework; we will not use the names we used in the past.”
Ker said that as the new bill is to conform with the ROC constitutional framework, not only would its title be changed, but some of its content would also be adjusted.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The original bill drafted by the DPP in the previous legislature was called “Regulations for Handling Agreements between Taiwan and China,” with a preamble stating that the law was meant to regulate issues concerning the signing of agreements between Taiwan and China.
However, since the caucus has decided to follow the ROC constitutional framework, the terms “Taiwan” and “China” would be changed to “Taiwan Area” and “Mainland Area” in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws on cross-strait issues.
New Power Party executive chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said Ker’s comments were unclear and that the DPP had an obligation to explain if and why its position had changed.
The “framework of the Constitution of the Republic of China” can be interpreted in different ways, depending on which part of the Constitution is referenced, Huang said.
He said that if the “framework” refers to the sovereignty invested by the Constitution in Taiwanese, it would not necessarily represent a denial of the “two states” dictum (兩國論), which was premised on the legal theory that the nation has already achieved de facto independence as a result of constitutional amendments passed during the democratization process.
Any framework that relegates Taiwan to the status of an “area” of the Republic of China and includes a Chinese “mainland” would be “unacceptable,” he said.
“We have invested a lot of energy into constructing a Taiwanese national consciousness and most Taiwanese have already accepted the fact that China and Taiwan are different countries — do you really want to go back 20 years and say that we are really ‘one country with two areas’?” Huang said.
The “one country with two areas” stance goes against common sense, while the 11th amendment which enshrined it into the Constitution was illegitimate because it had been passed by “lifelong” lawmakers who held their seats from 1949 until 1992, he said.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS