The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and Taiwan's representative office in Singapore said yesterday they had no idea whether Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) met with Chinese officials during his visit to Singapore.
Lien, who visited Singapore several times when he was the vice president and premier, could have asked the Taipei Representative Office in Singapore to help arrange his visit. The diplomatic privilege is granted to former leaders of the country.
However, according to a Taiwanese government representative in Singapore, the KMT and the Singaporean government planned Lien's two-day trip. The KMT did not consult the representative office in Singapore about Lien's visit.
"It is inconvenient for us to intervene in [Lien's trip]. We know the KMT and the Singaporean side arranged the visit," the representative said.
Michel Lu (
"We are happy to see the success of unofficial exchanges," he said.
The MAC said it had no information about whether Lien met with the Chinese communist officials in Singapore, but noted that KMT officials denied reports of Lien's contact with the Chinese government.
KMT Legislator Su Chi (
Lien and Singaporean leaders are "familiar friends," said Su, a former deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office. "I don't think his trip to Singapore had anything to do with his planned trip to China. The Singaporean visit was scheduled long time ago."
MAC Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Saturday that Lien, who is planning a trip to China, might break the law if he signs any agreement with Chinese leaders that involves Taiwan's sovereignty.
Wu said the government would not intervene in social exchanges between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party. But he warned the KMT would be violating the law if it goes ahead and signs a "peace deal" with Beijing without the government's authorization.
In related news, Wang Dan (
Speaking at a press conference in Los Angeles, Wang said the KMT demanded truth and democracy in Taiwan but ignored China's abuses of human rights.
He challenged Lien to ask Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) to make moves toward democratization during his visit to China.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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