The Ministry of the Interior is taking action over four matchmaking ads for Chinese women and both the advertisers and the media that ran the ads will face heavy fines.
"Five matchmaking ads appearing in different mediums were reviewed last week and four were found to have violated the Statute Governing the Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例)," Chen Tzu-ho (陳子和), section chief of the ministry's Department of Population, said yesterday.
"The advertisers and media outlets face fines of NT$100,000. This is the first time the ministry has taken such action," Chen said.
The statute stipulates that anyone who entrusts to another, is entrusted to engage in the ad broadcast or publication or any other promotion activity that is contrary to public order or good morals will face a fine of no less than NT$100,000.
Three of the five ads that were reviewed were aired on TV, while the other two ran in newspapers.
The ministry said it found out about the ads both through tips from people who had seen them and its own investigations.
According to Article 6 of the Law on Management of Promotion of Goods and Services from Mainland China in Taiwan (
Matchmaking ads for people from countries other than China, however, are not illegal.
"The disparity between policies is due to the fact that revisions to the Immigration Law (入出國及移民法), which would govern regulations on marriage to foreign spouses, have not yet passed. But the government is still implementing regulations dealing with matchmaking regulations," Chen said.
The Cross-Strait Marriage Harmony Promotion Association of the ROC said that it supports government efforts to clamp down on such ads, which may help limit bogus marriages.
"We are 100 percent behind the government's effort to crack down on fake cross-strait marriages, as matchmaking ads are a common way in which marriages are commercialized," said Liu Hsien-wen (劉獻文), the association's secretary-general.
"The one point we want to stress is that cracking down on the ads is only a superficial answer. Bogus marriages through liaison services will continue through underground channels," Liu said.
Liu said that many Taiwanese men sell proof-of-single-status certificates (
"It takes two to tango. These Chinese girls cannot possibly come here on their own to get married," Liu said.
"So if the government wants to crack down on bogus marriages, it should heavily penalize the men who act as fake husbands for money," Liu said. "It seems to me that the government is after the wrong group of people."
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,