A Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) official expressed opposition yesterday to Beijing's plan to develop China's Fujian Province into a "peaceful cooperation experimental district on the west coast of the Taiwan Strait," known in its shortened form as the "Haixi District development plan."
MAC Chief Secretary Jan Jyh-horng (詹志宏) said during a colloquium that Beijing's plan -- put forward by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) during the National People's Congress held earlier this month -- is aimed at enticing more Taiwanese businesses and industries to relocate their operations to Fujian, a move that will be detrimental to Taiwan's overall industrial development in the long run.
Jan said he doubts the feasibility of the plan, pointing out that while promoting a plan to woo Taiwanese investors, Beijing has repeatedly stressed its "one China" policy and WTO regulations -- two mutually contradictory ideas.
He said that the greatest barrier to the development of cross-strait relations is that the two sides cannot engage in normal dialogue, adding that although the MAC has made strenuous efforts to resume long-stalled cross-strait dialogue, the efforts and related calls have fallen on deaf ears in China.
Vincent Siew (
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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