The entry into the nation by pro-unification Chinese academic Li Yi (李毅) to attend a forum hosted by the Chinese Unity Promotion Party was illegal, the Mainland Affairs Council and the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday, revoking his visa and ordering his deportation.
As of press time last night, the NIA’s Taichung office was working to ascertain Li’s whereabouts.
Li was invited to speak on “maintaining the prospects of peaceful unification” at the forum, which is to follow a demonstration scheduled for tomorrow in Taichung, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said.
Photo: Copy by Chang Jui-chen, Taipei Times
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) had instructed both agencies to look into the matter, citing national security concerns, she said.
The NIA and the council decided to revoke Li’s visa, citing a breach of Article 16 of the Regulations Governing the Approval of People of the Mainland Area Visiting Taiwan for Purposes of Tourism (大陸地區人民來台從事觀光活動許可辦法), Kolas said.
Li applied to enter the nation for sightseeing as a US resident, the agencies said, adding that he posed a “potential threat to national security.”
Photo: Li Hsin-fang, Taipei Times
Regarding tomorrow’s planned demonstration, Kolas said that as the Taichung City Government had already approved it, it would fall under the city’s jurisdiction.
Author Joyce Yen (顏擇雅) said in a statement on Facebook that the party calling Li a “visiting sociology academic from the US” was an attempt at obfuscation.
While Li obtained his doctoral degree in the US, he does not hold a teaching position at any US university, Yen said.
Li is most often cited by the media as a researcher at Beijing’s Renmin University of China, she said.
Contrary to the stated topic for his talk at the forum, Li is a known supporter of unification through armed invasion, she added.
Yen called for a review of the nation’s legal system to determine how Li was allowed to “spread his views” in Taiwan, especially after he in 2016 said that China should send 25 million “new immigrants” to Taiwan to solve the “Taiwanese independence problem.”
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
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘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