The lifting of bans on Taiwanese news Web sites in China will play an important role in any decision permitting the return to Taiwan of correspondents from Xinhua and the People's Daily, Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Joseph Wu (
Wu said the council would examine whether Chinese media reports were factual and whether Beijing would allow access to Taiwanese news sites before allowing further journalistic exchange.
Wu's remarks followed the council's decision on Sunday to cancel authorization for Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily journalists in Taiwan. It has since said that Beijing should, at the very least, lift Internet bans on two Taiwanese papers, the China Times and the United Daily News.
"Apart from repeatedly urging China to allow public access to Taiwan's online news sites, we've also been working to attract other media organizations to Taiwan," Wu said yesterday, adding that increased cooperation with Hong Kong media outlets was in the works.
Rejecting criticism that it is violating freedom of the press, the council said that the recent halt on Xinhua and People's Daily activities was in accordance with an overall assessment of cross-strait exchanges. It also said reports carried in Xinhua and the People's Daily were often distorted and detrimental to improving relations with China. Correspondents from three other Chinese media organizations remain in Taiwan.
Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office has called on the council to reverse its decision and "urges the Taiwan authorities to `remove unreasonable obstacles' and `correct its erroneous ways' as soon as possible," according to Xinhua yesterday.
Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Li Weiyi (
The council was especially critical of Chinese state media outlets, pointing to specific headlines and stories that "fell short" of its journalistic standards.
On Wednesday, Wu displayed several Chinese newspaper headlines, including "People on the island feel the Anti-Secession Law is an opportunity for cross-strait development," "Taiwan's academic circles think the Anti-Secession Law is a goodwill gesture," and "Five major non-governmental organizations in Taiwan reject secession and anticipate peaceful unification."
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