Taiwan, take it or leave it, that remains the position of Beijing Olympic organizers, embarrassed two months ago when Taiwan backed out of participating in the 2008 Olympic torch relay -- just two hours after the route was announced on national TV.
"I think I've made my point very clear," Jiang Xiaoyu (
The route proposed by Beijing organizers has the torch arriving in Taiwan from Vietnam on April 30 next year and going on to Hong Kong and Macau. Many in Taiwan have pushed for a route that takes the torch through Taiwan via two Asian countries other than China.
"The April 26 route was agreed to by Beijing organizers and the Taipei Olympic Committee," Jiang said. "This is a written agreement and jointly agreed to. And the route was approved by the International Olympic Committee. We hope that the Taipei Olympic Committee and related Taiwan authorities can return to this previously arrived at agreement and return to our written agreement."
In announcing official numbers yesterday for the torch relay, Jiang gave no hint there was room for negotiation with Taiwan over the politically sensitive issue.
"The Olympic flame going through Taiwan is the aspiration of people on both sides of the Taiwan strait," Jiang said.
"We hope that the Olympic Committee of Taipei and other parties will stay free from artificial factors and return to the basic and common understanding reached by the two sides," he said.
Officials said 21,880 torchbearers would participate worldwide in the relay, the largest in Olympic history. Of the total, 19,400 will cover the routes in China. Beijing is allocated 624 torchbearer spots with 120 for Taiwan.
Olympic sponsors are allocated 5,586 spots in the torch relay -- 25 percent of the total. But Jiang said sponsors would have no say over picking participants for the prestigious final legs of the relay -- including the torchbearer who lights the Olympic caldron.
"That decision lies in the hands of BOCOG and not any other selection entities," Jiang said.
The 137,000km route will take 130 days to complete, cross five continents and reach the summit of Mount Everest. The relay begins March 25 in Greece and arrives in Beijing on March 31.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS