■ Business
Ma Ying-jeou to visit US
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is scheduled to visit the US in August to entice investment from the high-tech sector, a Taipei City Government official said yesterday. Ma is planning to visit Massachusetts, Penn-sylvania and California, where many renowned high-tech industries are located, to plug Taipei's investment environment, the official said. Ma will focus on enticing companies in the wireless communications, venture capital and biotechnology sectors, and will encourage them to sign letters of intent and set up Asian operational hubs, or research and development centers in the city, the official said.
■ Tourism
Japanese staying away
The private sector and the government will join forces in an all-out effort to attract Japanese tourists, an industry source said yesterday. Affected by circumstances mitigating against tourist interest in both Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan had to do its best to upgrade its attractions and inject new incentives into its tourism campaigns aimed at courting the lucrative Japanese market, the source said. To achieve a government target of luring more than 1 million tourists from Japan this year, Taiwan had to offer more appeal in the face of a decline in arrivals, the source added. The number of Japanese tourists has dropped since the beginning of the year. Statistics compiled by the Tourism Bureau show that the number of arrivals fell by 38 percent in January and 32 percent in February compared to last year's figures. The figure for last month was not expected to improve because of tensions surrounding the March 20 presidential election, the source 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