Chinese students disrupted a speech by Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) yesterday at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Tu, a LSE graduate, was invited to deliver a speech on Taiwan's educational reforms and the future of the nation. He was Taiwan's first minister to speak at the school.
The students held up signs reading "Stop cultural brainwashing" and "Taiwan is a part of China" -- ending up in a shouting match with Taiwanese students.
PHOTO: CNA
Event staff told the students to sit down, but one Chinese student stood up and brandished a sign before the speech had finished.
During the question and answer session, the Chinese students asked Tu whether he "acknowledged" Chinese culture, why he served as director of the National Palace Museum and what he meant by "Taiwan's sovereignty," which he had used in his speech.
This was met by angry protests from Taiwanese in the audience, who called for the questioner to stop speaking, whereupon the shouting match resumed.
Tu responded by emphasizing that Taiwan had its own values, rights and freedoms and that even though the government comprised political parties which are at odds with each other, Taiwan was a democratic country and its future would be decided by its citizens.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening 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) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software