According to the Executive Yuan's latest policy report, which was released to the press yesterday, the government is making the resumption of dialog with China a key policy goal for next year.
"The government will gradually promote direct links across the Strait, an effort that will require talks between the two sides," the report said. "To that end, it will seek to restore contacts between the Straits Exchange Foundation and [China's] Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait."
The policy change is in line with the conclusions reached by the just-concluded Economic Development Advisory Conference, which call for lifting the ban on full-scale cross-strait contacts, among other things, to help Taiwan stay competitive.
The country's accession to the WTO, likely in November, will also make contact with Chinese officials inevitable, as the international trade organization requires member states to open their markets to each other.
Beijing halted official exchanges with Taiwan in July 1999 after then-president Lee Teng-hui (
Despite the transfer of power last year, Taiwan's giant neighbor has continued to insist that the DPP government recognize the "one China" principle before allowing a resumption of contacts.
The 172-page Cabinet report covers a wide range of other policy areas.
For example, projected spending for the next fiscal year is projected at NT$1.5993 trillion -- down NT$37.8 billion, or 2.3 percent, compared with the present fiscal year. The sum accounts for 15.4 percent of the GNP, down from 16.5 percent this year.
Revenues are expected to reach NT$1.3407 trillion, down NT$53.9 billion, or 3.9 percent compared with this year.
The statistics suggests a budget deficit of NT$258.6 billion, the report said. There's also another NT$99 billion in bonds that are coming due.
To bridge the shortfall, the government plans to issue US$225 billion in public bonds, accounting for 14.6 percent of next year's spending -- close to the 15 percent ceiling allowed under law.
Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
On the domestic front, the government will continue the battle against the influence of organized crime and big-money interests.
Last year, the Ministry of Justice probed 2,188 alleged cases of corruption and prosecuted 1,105 suspects, of whom 402 were civil servants, according to the report.
The Ministry of the Interior is to continue pushing for the abolition of the direct election of township and village chiefs, as those races are susceptible to manipulation.
Diplomatically, the country will seek to join international organizations, whether their membership requires statehood or not.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has