Not only has Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) refused to hold a joint press conference with US President George W. Bush during his visit to the US, but the US has banned members of the foreign press from reporting from inside the White House.
Originally, the Foreign Press Center of the US Department of State announced that it would only be allowing a very limited number of foreign reporters into the White House to interview Hu during his welcoming ceremony.
However, a National Security Council (NSC) official told the Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) yesterday that due to the Secret Service's reservations about letting foreign media into the White House, only the Chinese reporters in Hu's entourage and US reporters would be allowed to report from inside the White House.
The official also said that such restrictions would apply to other foreign correspondents besides the Taiwanese press. Currently, very few foreign correspondents have White House press clearance due to strict vetting.
No Taiwanese correspondents possess White House clearance, and in the past all have had to pre-register and provide authorities with their passports, Social Security numbers and other personal information, before being allowed to enter the White House.
According to the new regulations as stated by the NSC, all Taiwanese press members who are not US citizens will be excluded from reporting from the White House, effective immediately.
The Taiwanese media has formally protested the decision. The NSC denies it bowed to Chinese demands in denying foreign reporters White House access.
The decision however had caught the attention the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which is currently investigating whether the Taiwanese press is being unfairly discriminated against by the US government.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS