Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday reiterated that travelers from Hong Kong and Macau, as well as Taiwanese returning home from the two areas, are to have their carry-on and check-in luggage fully checked at customs.
Su made the remarks on Facebook after a case of African swine fever was reported at a Hong Kong slaughterhouse on Friday.
Su said the government has since Jan. 16 been inspecting carry-on luggage of passengers arriving from China, Hong Kong and Macau, and has since purchased X-ray scanners, which are deployed at customs and ports nationwide.
Screen grab from Premier Su Tseng-chang’s Facebook page
He called on people to be on the lookout so that minced pork rice, a quintessential Taiwanese street food, would be protected.
Separately yesterday, Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Huang Chin-cheng (黃金城) said that the case in Hong Kong could have been expected, given that the region imports most of its pork from China, and is near China’s Guangdong and Fujian provinces, which reported infection cases last year.
Quarantine measures are adequate and the council has no plans to implement additional measures, Huang said.
In related news, as the annual meeting of the World Organisation for Animal Health is to take place in Paris at the end of this month, the council’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said it has received an invitation and would send representatives to the meeting.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
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