President Chen Shui-bian's (
Six years after Chen came to power, a poll found that 75 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with his performance and only 15 percent were satisfied, the Chinese-language Apple Daily said.
Among those who were dissatisfied, 58 percent questioned the integrity of the first family, 16 percent were unhappy with Taiwan's economy, seven percent with Taiwan's diplomatic isolation and six percent with crime.
Chen was inaugurated for a four-year term on May 20, 2000 and won re-election in 2004. He is due to step down in 2008.
Chen faces the biggest crisis of his presidency, and his ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) looks set to lose power to the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in 2008, the paper said.
The telephone poll of 1,066 people found 63 percent believe KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will win the 2008 presidential election, while only 15 percent thought Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) of the DPP would win the election.
The Apple Daily printed a chart to show how Taiwan's economy has worsened since Chen became president in 2000.
Taiwan's economy is currently growing at an annual rate of just 4.25 percent compared to 5.77 percent in 2000 while the unemployment rate has risen from 2.99 percent to 4.13 percent, the paper said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods