The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday it will send an airline representative and the head of the Civil Aviation Association to landmark talks with China this weekend to set up two-way charter flights bringing Taiwanese business-people home for the Lunar New Year holiday.
"We have decided to appoint Michael Lo (樂大信) and Billy Chang (張國政) to organize a negotiation team to talk with the mainland side in Macau on Jan. 15," the MAC said in a statement released last night.
Lo, chairman of the Taipei Airlines Association (TAA), has already been authorized to represent the government in talks with China.
On Wednesday, Beijing said that, in addition to the MAC and its proxy the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation, it is "negotiable" for Taiwan to send officials like Chang, director of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, as consultants to talk with China.
The MAC yesterday called on China to live up to its words to speedily hold talks with Taiwan.
"We hope China's side can speedily inform us who will be on its negotiation list to talk with us and to confirm whether it agrees to the date proposed by us to talk," the MAC said in its press release.
If everything goes well, the charter flights will be the first in more than five decades to have planes from both Taiwan and China entering their respective territories for flight services.
The two sides have reached a tacit understanding that this year's holiday charter flights will be "bilateral, reciprocal and non-stop," unlike the flights in 2003, when Taiwanese airlines had to fly empty to Shanghai to pick up Taiwanese and bring them back with stopovers in either Hong Kong or Macau.
This time, the two sides will also talk about expanding the flight points to at least Beijing and Guangzhou, in addition to Shanghai.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday voiced dissatisfaction with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans- Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), whose latest meeting, concluded earlier the same day, appeared not to address the country’s application. In a statement, MOFA said the CPTPP commission had "once again failed to fairly process Taiwan’s application," attributing the inaction to the bloc’s "succumbing to political pressure," without elaborating. Taiwan submitted its CPTPP application under the name "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu" on Sept. 22, 2021 -- less than a week after China
THE GOOD WORD: More than 100 colleges on both sides of the Pacific will work together to bring students to Taiwan so they can learn Mandarin where it is spoken A total of 102 universities from Taiwan and the US are collaborating in a push to promote Taiwan as the first-choice place to learn Mandarin, with seven Mandarin learning centers stood up in the US to train and support teachers, the Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET) said. At the annual convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages held over the weekend in New Orleans, Louisiana, a Taiwan Pavilion was jointly run by 17 representative teams from the FICHET, the Overseas Community Affairs Council, the Steering Committee for the Test of Proficiency-Huayu, the
A home-style restaurant opened by a Taiwanese woman in Quezon City in Metro Manila has been featured in the first-ever Michelin Guide honoring exceptional restaurants in the Philippines. The restaurant, Fong Wei Wu (豐味屋), was one of 74 eateries to receive a “Michelin Selected” honor in the guide, while one restaurant received two Michelin stars, eight received one star and 25 were awarded a “Bib Gourmand.” The guide, which was limited to restaurants in Metro Manila and Cebu, was published on Oct. 30. In an interview, Feng Wei Wu’s owner and chef, Linda, said that as a restaurateur in her 60s, receiving an
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
RSS