China has done little to harass pro-Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taiwanese businessmen, even though the People's Daily reported that China does not welcome these people, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday.
The People's Daily report accused Hsu Wen-lung (許文龍), founder of the Chi Mei Group, of using the money he made in China to fund independence activities, but Wu said a government investigation found that the newspaper's message has not affected Hsu's investment in China.
Wu said that he planned to talk with China-based Taiwanese businesspeople about Beijing's treatment of pro-DPP executives when they return to Taiwan for the Dragon Boat Festival, during which the government routinely holds conferences to discuss cross-strait political and trade developments with them.
"Taiwanese businesspeople have contributed greatly to China's economy. If China does inappropriate things to them or tries to mix politics with business, this would estrange Taiwanese business leaders and damage cross-strait relations," he said.
Wu made the remarks to the semi-official Central News Agency (CNA), which launched a Web site for China-based Taiwanese businessmen at tbm.cna.com.hk offering real-time information to help them "seize business opportunities," according to the agency.
MAC officials, academics studying cross-strait affairs and business leaders joined the Web site launching ceremony.
As the Taiwanese business presence has increased in China over the years, a number of government and private agencies have set up Web sites to serve these businesspeople, including the MAC, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Chinese National Federation of Industries.
CNA said its new site will send daily news messages to the cellular phones of around 100 Taiwanese business leaders in China, including the presidents of 78 Taiwanese business associations across China. The messages are free of charge.
The businesspeople can express their opinions on the Web site, which offers updated news from Taiwan, China and the world.
"Taiwan's investments in China and cross-strait trade have become the most important part of relations between Taiwan and China. Last year alone, cross-strait trade volume amounted to US$46.3 billion," Wu said at the ceremony.
"Informal statistics showed Taiwanese business investment in China has reached US$70 billion.
These executives have opened nearly 50,000 companies in China, and more than 500,000 of their relatives and employees now reside there," Wu said.
With the rapidly changing economic environment in China and intensifying cross-strait exchanges, Taiwanese businesspeople working there could face more problems, Wu said.
These problems arise in part from China's unsound legal system and from the long-stalled cross-strait negotiations, he said.
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
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
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