Taiwan's military pledges its allegiance to the nation, and it is unlikely that it would stage a coup as might be the case in other newly emerging democracies, a spokesman for the Executive Yuan said yesterday.
Cabinet Spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (
"We have faith in our own military," he said at a press conference at the Government Information Office in Taipei yesterday afternoon.
Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told the media briefing that he was quite confident that a military coup like the one that took place in Thailand on Tuesday would not happen in Taiwan.
"The military culture in Thailand as well as many other Southeast Asian countries is quite different from what we have here in Taiwan. ... The majority of the Taiwanese people believe that we must play by the rules," Wu said.
He added that a strong democratic structure was in place in Taiwan, which meant that a coup would be almost impossible to carry out.
Wu also used the opportunity to say that the government's attitude toward cross-strait relations remained unchanged, and that the government's policy of opening up to visitors from China had not changed.
He said that 60 Chinese employees of pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson came to Taiwan for a meeting on Aug. 16, while 421 Chinese employees of Microsoft came to Taiwan for their annual managerial meeting on Aug. 20. Another 328 Chinese publishers arrived yesterday to attend a seminar for cross-strait publishers.
For the near future, Wu said, the MAC has approved requests from another four groups of Chinese visitors: 100 members of a Chinese Buddhist organization who will arrive on Oct. 4, 500 members of the Chinese Hakka Association on Oct. 27, 600 travel agents on Nov. 1 and another 100 Chinese publishers for a separate seminar on Nov. 10.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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