■ China
Taxi fight kills man
A Taiwanese businessman was declared brain dead by doctors in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, in China following a fistfight he had with a local taxi driver. Chen Kuo-yuan (陳國原), 32, a deputy manager of a Taiwanese-invested electrical appliance manufacturing company in Dongguan, was walking back to his dormitory room at around 1am on Saturday when he was inadvertently hit by a taxi which was backing up in an attempt to park. Chen then thumped the taxi cab's back trunk with his fist, and the taxi driver stepped out of his car. The confrontation led to a fistfight, with Chen being quickly knocked down, according to an official from the Taiwanese Business Association in Dongguan.
■ Cross-strait ties
MOFA blasts China
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday blasted China for requiring Taiwan immigrants to Canada to put "China" as their birthplace in their Canadian passports, calling it another of China's tricks to suppress Taiwan. "The incident shows China is trying every means to suppress Taiwan. China must face up to the fact that Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country," MOFA spokesman Shih Jui-chi (石瑞琦) was quoted by the Liberty Times as saying. According to the Liberty Times, Canada -- acting on the order of China -- is now asking Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau immigrants to write their birthplace as "China" when applying for Canadian passports. "If they refuse to do so, when they apply for visas to travel to China using their Canadian passports, their application may be rejected," the paper said. Canadian immigration official Suzanne Meunier confirmed that China has notified Canada to tell Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau immigrants to put down their birthplace as "China." She said Canadian passport processors are telling Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau immigrants to pay attention to China's new visa rule to avoid being rejected when they apply for Chinese visas. "But whether they put it down as `China' or not, there is no compulsory rule," she said.
■ Immigration
Illegal immigrants caught
A total of more than 1,800 Chinese illegal immigrants to Taiwan were caught last year, the National Police Administration (NPA) reported yesterday. The number of illegal mainland Chinese immigrants totaled 1,833 last year, up 620 from 2001, NPA officials said. A majority of the illegal Chinese immigrants were caught inside Taiwan, with more than one-third of the total, or 642, being women who had sneaked into Taiwan to engage in the sex trade, the police officials said.
■ Education
Teachers eye Kinmen posts
A total of 156 candidates took part in a two-day screening examination in Kinmen yesterday for 15 teaching positions at various primary schools and kindergartens in Kinmen this fall. Of the 156 candidates, more than two-thirds, or 104, came from Taiwan proper, flying to the outlying island to attend. Kinmen Magistrate Lee Chu-feng (李炷烽) inspected the examination location and offered his welcome to all of the candidates, saying that Kinmen offers equal opportunities to candidates from both Kinmen and Taiwan to compete for the 15 teaching jobs. "All teachers are welcome to teach in Kinmen as long as they are good teachers," Lee said. A total of 75 of the 156 candidates will be selected for the second-round test slated for today, mainly to examine their teaching skills and creative ideas.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift