The Presidential Office yesterday denied a Chinese-language media report that said Taipei, using its contacts in the US, had asked China to make some cross-strait concessions now that it has passed its "Anti-Secession" Law.
"The government did not do what the story reported," a Presidential Office spokesperson said in a text message dismissing the content of the report.
The text message was confirmed to be authentic.
A report in the China Times yesterday said that "A source confirmed that the government had sought mediation through the US to relay Taiwan's hope that China could show some good will ... now it had passed the Anti-Secession Law."
The so-called "goodwill gestures that are of substantial interests to Taiwan" included, for instance, Beijing not interfering with Taiwan's signing of free trade pacts with other counties, allowing Taiwan to participate in the World Health Assembly and permitting a certain number of tourists from China to visit Taiwan, the report said.
The text message denied this, saying, "President Chen Shui-bian (
In his first comments on the law, Chen on Wednesday expressed "grave concern and regret," over the legislation and announced an official reaction to the law, broken down into six principles. These include: Taiwan is an independent sovereign state and only the Taiwanese people can decide the nation's future; Taiwan and China should resolve their differences through dialogue; China's law is and insult and violates the principles of freedom, democracy and human rights; and Taiwan will seek reconciliation, not confrontation, with China.
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
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
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