President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will give details of the constitutional reform agenda slated for 2006 in his inauguration speech tomorrow, Mainland Affairs Council chairman-designate Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday.
Wu, currently deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office, said during a news conference for foreign reporters covering the inauguration that reforming the government structure and the legislature will be key issues the new constitution aims to deal with.
The strong worded statement on Taiwan which Beijing issued on Monday, condemning Chen's alleged separatists actions such as referendums and calling for a new constitution, shows that China does not understand Taiwan's democratization process, Wu said.
PHOTO: CNA
According to Wu, the current five-branch system of government has not functioned efficiently and needs to be changed.
When asked whether Chen will repeat his "five noes" pledge in tomorrow's speech, Wu said Chen's inaugural address will follow the spirit of the one he made four years ago
Voicing concern about the escalation of China's military power, Wu said Taiwan needs to strengthen its own military capacity by procuring more weapons and cooperating with the US.
China has been developing and modernizing its air and naval forces and purchasing arms from Russia, Wu said, noting in China and Taiwan's case, "the stronger side may be tempted to use military force against the weaker side."
He said while misunderstandings between Beijing and Taipei exist, some of his academic friends in China, who advise the Chinese leadership about Taiwan, have been frustrated because they frequently discover that their reports have been revised by government officials reviewing the documents.
By the time the reports reach the top officials, they're unrecognizable from the original, he said.
Wu said Taiwan's independence is not an issue for the people of Taiwan, who elect their own president and legislature.
Every aspect of Taiwan will prove it an "exclusive jurisdiction," he said.
Meanwhile, outgoing council chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (
The council held yesterday a farewell tea party for its three outgoing officials, Tsai and vice chairmen Chen Ming-tong (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching