The government-hosted conference for China-based Taiwanese businesspeople over the past two days to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival turned into a tug-of-war between Taiwan and China to compete for the businessmen's support.
The semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said that, due to pressure from China, many Taiwanese business leaders in China dared not come home for the conference. This claim was nonetheless denied by most conference participants.
The conference, held in Ilan on Wednesday and yesterday, saw a decline in the number of participants compared to previous years. Presidents of Taiwanese businesspeople's associations in Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen did not attend the event.
Participants in the conference joined tours to several popular tourist destinations in Ilan and visited the Ilan County Government, which wishes to attract investments.
Officials from the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and the SEF said they encountered great difficulties in inviting the businesspeople to the conference but thanked those who resisted China's pressure to come home.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chang Ching-fang's (張清芳) report on China's maltreatment of pro-DPP Taiwan-ese businesspeople on Wednesday further fueled the already politically sensitive atmosphere.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun and a group of government officials, including MAC Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh (何美玥) and Vice Minister of Transportation and Communications Oliver Yu (游芳來), traveled to Ilan to meet with the businesspeople.
Wu said he has read Chang's report but could not confirm whether it was true. Related government agencies are investigating abuses Chang reported, he said.
But businesspeople from Guangdong, where the alleged abuses took place, dismissed Chang's report as exaggerated.
Wu said the changed investment environment in China may make doing business there more risky. The government will encourage China-based businesspeople to divert their investments in China back to Taiwan or to other countries to reduce the risks, he said.
Many businesspeople at the conference expressed the hope that cross-strait relations would remain stable. Their businesses suffer when hostility between China and Taiwan increases partly because the two sides' negotiations are all suspended, leaving many problems unsolved.
Wu reiterated the government's commitment to establish a peace and stability framework for cross-strait communication and appealed to China to treat the Taiwan issue with empathy.
Yu told the businesspeople that President Chen Shui-bian (
Addressing the businesspeople's concerns that Chen may provoke China again, the premier said Chen wants to concentrate on domestic constitutional reform during his second term.
"President Chen has shifted his focus to creating a youthful, energetic and efficient government ? He is thinking about Taiwan's historical status and what he can do for the coming generations," Yu said.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires