Saying that any impression that it was anti-Japanese was the result of a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) smear campaign, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday outlined measures to improve its relations with Japan, including plans to better communicate with Japanese Diet members and the media.
In addition to creating a Japanese-language version of its official Web site, the KMT plans to translate major local news into Japanese and send summaries of the stories to Japanese parliamentarians and media via daily e-mails -- a move it said would help the Japanese to gain a better understanding of Taiwan from an unbiased source.
The measures were decided after KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (
While Ma claimed that his visit had boosted understanding between the two countries, he acknowledged the need to strengthen the KMT's relations with Japan, and denounced the DPP for damaging the KMT's reputation.
"The KMT's `anti-Japan, pro-China' image is a result of a smear campaign orchestrated by our DPP friends. People think that we are anti-Japan just because we seek cooperation and exchanges with China," Ma said yesterday during the KMT's Central Standing Committee meeting.
KMT Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (
"The DPP has invested considerable resources [in painting a certain picture of Taiwan], such as by inviting Japanese parliamentarians to visit Taiwan and promoting Taiwanese independence through media outlets including the Liberty Times, the Taipei Times and some Japanese publications," he said.
Claiming that Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took his dissatisfaction with growing exchanges between the KMT and China out on Ma, Chiang suggested that the party work to erase its anti-Japan image.
KMT legislators Lee Jih-chu (
"[Taiwan's] representatives in Japan are all pro-independence ... We should have a KMT representative stationed there in order to enhance communication with the Japanese Diet," he said.
While declining to send a KMT representative to Japan for financial reasons, Ma said party legislators and academics should visit the country regularly, adding that he would meet with Japanese media figures more often to improve the KMT's negative image.
The chairman, however, criticized Koizumi's controversial visits to the Yasukuni shrine during his trip and urged him to take a broader look at history, saying that the visits seemed to contradict "the Japanese values of honoring human rights and freedoms."
Ma yesterday defended his stance and said many Japanese shared his opinion and were opposed to their leaders visiting the shrine, which honors 2.5 million war dead, including 14 top war criminals.
He said Japanese politicians told him they would be pleased to see the KMT improve ties with China, as it could help reduce tension across the Taiwan Strait, adding that he would visit the country again next spring.
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
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
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