While China's ruling Communist Party (CCP) pledged to establish harmony during its 5th Plenum of the 16th Central Committee, political experts said yesterday that many disharmonious phenomena exist within both the Chinese government and society.
A group of political experts presented their analyses of China's development after the plenum at a forum held by the Foundation on International and Cross-Strait Studies in Taipei.
The CCP wrapped up the four-day plenum on Tuesday by approving its "11th Five-Year Plan," aimed at redirecting policy from growth for growth's sake to a more sustainable model that better addresses social inequities which are reflected in the widening gap between rich and poor and could threaten social stability.
"The inequity problem is very difficult to overcome for the Chinese authority," said Liu Da-nien (
Liu said that the gap between rich and poor in China has been widening in recent years even though Beijing has tried hard to step up development in the mostly rural west of the country.
A lack of infrastructure construction in coastal areas and the risk of a shortage of industrial resources complicate Beijing's economic outlook, as foreign investors might be hesitant to put their money into China considering these variables, Liu said.
From the political point of view, Tung Li-wen (
"The so called `Hu-Wen regime' should be replaced by `Hu-Zeng regime,' Tung said, referring to Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Wen is responsible for overseeing China's economic policy, such as its macro-control policy and the implementation of measures to increase farmers' income, and he was harshly criticized by Zeng during the plenum, Liu said.
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