The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) closed the gift shop at its headquarters yesterday after drawing flak for breaking the law by trading in and exchanging Chinese yuan for the local currency.
KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
"The New Taiwan dollar is the only currency allowed in Taiwan, and using other currencies violates the law," Ma said yesterday after presiding over a municipal meeting as Taipei mayor.
PHOTO: CNA
"The KMT headquarters should not be the first one to break the law," Ma added
The gift shop at the party's headquarters was set up after the 2004 presidential election. It sells souvenirs such as books, watches, T-shirts, mugs sporting the KMT logo or flag, and has become a popular stop for Chinese tourists.
Ma had demanded that the party close the gift shop at the end of last month, as the KMT is scheduled to move from its current headquarters to a smaller building in Bade Road this month.
But the shop continued operating and was taped by local TV stations last year accepting yuan and helping Chinese tourists change yuan into New Taiwan dollars.
The Taiwanese government bans the trading or exchange of the yuan in the country, and the money would be confiscated if found. Article 38 of the Statute Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (
Ma said he had never been in the gift shop, and "will not stop the law's enforcement" if the Central Bank decides to confiscate the yuan accepted by the shop.
KMT Deputy Secretary-General Chang Che-chen (
"It's all because Taiwan is not financially open [to China]. The Bei-jing Hotel accepts the New Taiwan dollar, and I think we are falling behind in some areas," he said yesterday at the KMT headquarters.
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
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
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