Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said yesterday that the special task force on cross-strait affairs that the legislature is planning to set up will facilitate direct and effective exchanges between Taiwan and China.
As to his proposal to invite Wu Bangguo (吳邦國), chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China, to visit, Wang said the proposal will have to be approved by the task force and the legislature before it can be carried out.
Wang, who is also a vice chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), put forth the proposal on Tuesday and immediately met opposition from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Taiwan Solidarity Union legislators.
As for the visit to China by KMT Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kun (
Wang said the KMT hopes to do something for the country and should not be mistaken as intending to conduct some kind of peace talks with the Chinese Communist Party.
According to Wang, the KMT is seeking various means to try to remove the barriers between the two sides.
For example, Wang said, a visit by a KMT delegation earlier this year helped clear the way for the launch of the cross-strait Lunar New Year charter flights.
He said that the visit to China by KMT members is a kind of civil exchange and that the KMT does not represent the country without the government's authorization.
He also said that the postponement of the KMT chairmanship election until July has nothing to do with Chairman Lien Chan's (
DPP Legislator Trong Chai (
Chai also called Wang's proposal to recognize Chinese academic degrees "a very dangerous thing," warning that "Taiwan could be subverted" by people who receive education in China if the proposal is adopted by the government.
Lawmaker Tsai Huang-liang, also of the DPP, said inviting Wu to Taiwan is not something the country and its people need.
He urged Wang to stop using cross-Taiwan Strait issues as a means of boosting his chances of winning his competition with Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
DPP Legislator Pan Meng-an, meanwhile, accused Wang of betraying the sovereignty of Taiwan just to win the support of pan-blue alliance hardliners.
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