China is bound to overhaul its inflexible Taiwan policy after the presidential election next March, President and DPP Chairman Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said yesterday.
"I'm confident that China will have to take a more pragmatic approach toward Taiwan and new opportunities will emerge in cross-strait relations," Chen said. "Future cross-strait relations will only get better and move toward the direction of dignity, equality and safety."
Chen made the remark yesterday afternoon during the weekly closed-door meeting of the Central Standing Committee.
Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) briefed Chen at the meeting about the council's yearlong assessment of the impact of direct cross-strait transportation links, which was made public last Friday.
The report says CKS International Airport and the Kaohsiung International Airport should be designated for direct cross-strait flights, while China may choose any of its international airports for direct links with Taiwan.
A survey by the Civil Aeronautics Administration shows that the first five airports in China that Taiwanese airlines wish to be opened for direct air links are Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Xiamen and Shenzhen.
Since Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has campaigned on turning the city's Sungshan Airport into a facility for direct cross-strait transportation, Ma has vowed to continue fighting for the airport.
According to a city government official who asked not to be named, Taipei Deputy Mayor Pai Hsiou-hsiung (白秀雄) will present statistics today to try to convince Premier Yu Shyi-kun to take the city's proposal into consideration.
"We'll present convincing data to show that the market demand is there, that it will lower transportation costs and that national security is not a problem," the official said.
Cross-strait direct transportation is different from opening up the entire nation at the expense of national security, the official said.
"The best-case scenario is to strike a balance between national security and economic development and that is also what we plan to do," the official said.
Chen also called on Beijing yesterday to forsake its "one China" rhetoric so that both sides can reach some kind of reconciliation.
"The basic principles of our cross-strait policies -- national security and [national] interest -- have never changed and will never change in the future," Chen said. "Only when the DPP is in power can Beijing understand that Taiwanese people cannot accept the `one China' principle."
According to the direct air-links report, there would be no direct, point-to-point cross-strait flights because of security concerns.
Aircraft flying between Taiwan and China will still have to pass through the airspace of a third territory, probably either Hong Kong or Japan's Ryukyu Islands, before arriving at their destination. Only the current requirement that planes actually land in the third territory will be lifted.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,