The New Power Party (NPP) yesterday slammed the Mainland Affairs Council for its “near incompetence” regarding China’s new measure to issue residency cards to Taiwanese and called for more concrete countermeasures from the Taiwanese government.
“Although China unveiled the measure well before last week, the council did not state any plans to counter it until the party [on Tuesday] last week advocated amending the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) so that card holders would be treated the same as those with household registration in China by requiring them to report to the Taiwanese government,” NPP Legislator and party caucus whip Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) told a news conference in Taipei.
Although the council finally announced on Thursday last week that card holders would be required to report to the authorities, it has yet to decide whether to suspend or cancel card holders’ household registration in Taiwan, he said.
Photo: CNA
A tougher approach and more concrete countermeasures from the government would not restrict the rights of Taiwanese living in China, but rather “offer them more bargaining chips when negotiating with Chinese authorities and prevent them from being pressured into applying for the card,” he added.
The council’s attitude toward China has been “not only timid, but nearly incompetent,” NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said.
“Taiwanese have all been wondering what the council and the Straits Exchange Foundation have been doing. If they cannot propose any concrete countermeasures, we might as well get the Executive Yuan to put them under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” he said.
Hsu said the party would be meeting with Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) to get an idea of how many Taiwanese have applied for the card, whether Taiwanese have been forced to apply — and, if so, who are more likely to be pressured — and how the council plans to respond to China, adding that the party would share what it learns at the meeting with the public.
While Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ding-yu (王定宇) plans to propose a draft amendment similar to the NPP bill, Hsu said he hopes that other DPP members would also support the effort.
The Chinese State Council Information Office announced on Aug. 16 that from this month, Taiwanese, Hong Kongers and Macanese who have lived in China for more than six months and are legally working, living or studying in the country would be eligible to apply for a residency card.
Card holders would be granted certain rights and benefits enjoyed by Chinese citizens, such as compulsory education, social insurance and housing subsidies.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS