Following the murder of a China-based Taiwanese businessman in Jiangsu Province this week, the Mainland Affairs Council yesterday called on Chinese authorities to sign an agreement to protect the rights of Taiwanese businesspeople working in China, commonly known as taishang.
"The string of homicides in recent months has been cause for concern. In order to protect taishang, cross-strait dialogue should be conducted to discuss the matter, and an agreement should be signed," council vice chairman and spokesman Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) said yesterday during a weekly press briefing.
Chiu's announcement comes just days after Chinese police discovered the mangled body of 40-year-old taishang Hsu Shih-chieh (許世杰) in the trunk of his own car on Sunday. Chiu said that Hsu's death was not an isolated incident, pointing out the murder of taishang Sung Yu (宋鈺) and his family last June. Chinese police have confirmed that Hsu was murdered and are continuing their investigation.
Council chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) also called attention to the increasing danger for Taiwanese businesspeople living in China. Wu said the total number of crimes involving physical violence against Taiwanese businesspeople (including murder, kidnapping and armed robberies) in 2000 had been 51. However, crime rates have continued to climb in recent years, hitting 67 in 2001, 91 in 2002, and 107 last year. This year, 73 cases have been filed for the period between January and August.
"If the rights of Taiwanese businesspeople in China cannot be effectively protected, then this will have an impact on investment," Chiu said yesterday, warning that the trend of increased investment in China since President Chen Shui-bian (
According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, for the first half of this year, 70 percent of all Taiwanese investment abroad went to China.
According to records provided by the Straits Exchange Foundation, the semi-official organization that oversees Taiwanese investment in China, since 1991, 63 Taiwanese businesspeople have been murdered while working and living in China; 115 taishang have gone missing; 50 have been kidnapped or illegally detained by authorities; and 78 have been robbed or otherwise physically harmed.
Chiu also said yesterday that the violence encountered by taishang in China could possibly drive away foreign investment in general.
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:
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