Beijing gave unusual VIP treatment to Taiwanese business leaders yesterday, underscoring its warm relations with the nation's investors just a day after announcing the arrest of 24 Taiwanese spies.
About 70 China-based investors, all heads of Taiwan chambers of commerce in provinces and cities across China, descended on Beijing for an impromptu closed-door meeting at the invitation of the Cabinet's policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office.
Delegates were met at the airport by Chinese officials, an unusual gesture.
"We were escorted through the airport VIP channel," said one delegate who spoke on condition of anonymity before the one-day meeting.
The meeting focused on China's desire for Taiwan to lift a decades-old ban on direct air and shipping links, delegates said.
Chinese officials made no mention of the espionage scandal, but warned against moves toward independence.
"There is a prerequisite for the peace and stability of relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. That is, the Taiwan side must not always be going for Taiwan independence," Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, told the meeting.
"It must stop splittist activities. Otherwise, it will endanger the immediate interests of Taiwan compatriots and people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait," Chen added.
Analysts said China was keen to woo Taiwanese investors despite tensions and rhetoric as part of efforts to lure the country back to the fold.
"This is to buy over the hearts of Taiwanese businessmen," an analyst from Taiwan, who asked not to be identified, said of the meeting.
"Chinese officials personally went to the airport to greet the heads of Taiwan chambers of commerce. Such high-standard treatment is rare."
Yesterday's meeting came on the heels of the arrest of 24 alleged spies from Taiwan and 19 Chinese accomplices, one of the biggest espionage scandals in China's Communist era.
China's official Xinhua news agency announced the arrests on Wednesday but gave scant details of the accusations against them.
Taiwanese and Hong Kong media said Taiwanese businessmen were among those arrested, but Minister of Defense Tang Yao-ming (湯曜明) said yesterday that none of those names worked for his ministry, a spokesman said.
Cabinet spokesman Lin Chia-lung (
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