President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen made the remarks while giving a speech at the opening of the annual meeting of an international trade and commerce workshop held in Tainan County, his birthplace.
A disgruntled Chen accused the opposition of trying to undermine the government's reform efforts and undercutting the nation's bargaining power, saying that their attempts to make the government yield to their China policies and to hobble the government are the biggest crises in Taiwan's development.
Chen stressed that Taiwan is not in as bad a shape as opposition leaders have claimed, and said that he is confident that the domestic economy will soon get stronger.
Pointing out that he believes the nation's per-capita income will reach US$15,156 for this year, he said that there is hard evidence that Taiwan's exports and imports last month hit five-year monthly highs of US$19.1 billion and US$16.4 billion.
In addition, he said that private-sector investment in the home market in the first three quarters already reached 85 percent of the yearly target of NT$860 billion (US$24.3 billion) set by the government for this year, while the national coffers collected NT$1.33 trillion in taxes in the first 10 months of the year -- a historic high for the January-October period.
A sharp ideological divide has driven some people to sing the blues over Taiwan's future, but the nation's destiny does not lie in opening direct links or in bracing for integration with China, he argued. Taking Hong Kong as an example, he said that the former British colony has lost its luster after it was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
The president made it clear that the nation will never become a province of China and asserted that maintaining a Taiwanese identity and having the will to sacrifice for the homeland will be the decisive factors for the country's future.
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:
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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