■Health
Japanese make donation
The Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Taipei yesterday donated NT$5.7 million along with 10,000 surgical masks to Taiwan in an attempt to help ease the SARS outbreak in the country. Chamber chairman Toshimasa Furukawa presented the donation to Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Hwang (黃瀧元) at the foreign ministry yesterday afternoon. Around 120 of the 350 Japanese firms in the country contributed to the donation, Furukawa said. Later in the day, the Japanese government announced that it would donate 50,000 pieces of surgical garments and 500 masks along with other medical items. The ministry expressed its gratitude for the promised donation from Tokyo.
■ Politics
MAC gets new official
Internationally renowned scholar Alexander Chieh-cheng Huang (黃介正) has been picked as the third deputy chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, the council announced yesterday. Council Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) made the announcement last night. The post has been vacant for a year. Huang's expertise in international strategic issues and ties with foreign think tanks would be beneficial to the council, Tsai said. A professor of international relations at Tamkang University, Huang was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington from 1999 to 2000 and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution from 1998 to 1999. He was a consultant at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington from 1993 to 1998.
■ Cross-strait ties
Business told to come home
Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) yesterday urged domestic companies with trading or manufacturing operations in China to shift their investments back home. Chen said it is government policy to encourage Taiwanese businesses to divert their investments from overseas or China back to Taiwan, and he added that the government has continued to improve the domestic investment climate and has updated relevant regulations to provide better incentives for investors.
He said the council has continued to devise policies to facilitate domestic investment, including establishing a "China to Taiwan" fund channel, inviting Chinese experts and professionals to Taiwan and providing incentives for multinational corporations to invest in Taiwan.
■ Economics
Overseas business to invest
The Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce in England resolved on Thursday to invest in Taiwan to support the government's call for increased investment by overseas Chinese. An investors' group to be organized by the chamber is scheduled to depart for Taiwan on Nov. 1, according to the resolution passed during the group's annual general meeting. The group's chairman, Huang Kuei-chien (黃貴乾), reiterated the Ministry of Economic Affairs' policy of offering investment incentives for overseas investors in land acquisition, skilled labor and tariffs and taxation. Addressing the meeting, Taipei Representative Office in the UK Representative Tien Hung-mao (田弘茂) urged the chamber's members to invest in Taiwan to demonstrate their support for the the nation with concrete action. Tien said
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods