Visiting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) on Saturday panned a "cross-strait common market" concept advocated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice presidential candidate as "ridiculously unrealistic."
In a speech to a group of Taiwanese expatriates from the greater New York area, Hsieh said he firmly opposed the cross-strait common market mechanism being advocated, adding that if the common market were to be implemented, Chinese women -- known to have been smuggled into Taiwan by human traffickers largely to work in the underground sex trade -- would no longer need to be smuggled into Taiwan as illegal immigrants.
Noting that the gulf between the two sides in various sectors is too wide to bridge, Hsieh said that with problems regarding foreign laborers working in Taiwan already hard to handle, Taiwan's government and people would find themselves facing an even bigger headache should workers from China be introduced into Taiwan under a "common market" system.
Addressing the issue of whether he would choose former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) or former vice premier Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭) as his running mate for next year's presidential race, Hsieh said he is remaining open-minded and would not make a subjective decision based on his personal feelings.
Hsieh said he would do all he could, including asking repeatedly after first being turned down, to win the consent of his chosen future running mate in order to enable the DPP to win the election.
Meanwhile, Hsieh called for all Taiwanese expatriates in the US to return to Taiwan to cast their votes for the DPP next March or at least make telephone calls to help broaden the DPP's support base, because Taiwan could not afford to allow "the corrupt" KMT to return to power.
Accompanied by 14 DPP legislators, Hsieh arrived in New York on Friday, starting a 10-day visit which will also take him to Washington, Detroit and Los Angeles.
On Saturday afternoon, Hsieh joined DPP legislators Hsiao Pi-khim (蕭美琴) and Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) to watch a Yankees baseball game.
Hsieh said if he was elected president, he would invite the New York Yankees to Taiwan to play some friendly baseball games with their Taiwanese counterparts.
Hsieh was scheduled to travel to Washington yesterday, where he would address the National Press Club on "mutualism and Taiwan's national security agenda" and give a speech on Capitol Hill on "American values and Taiwan's existence."
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