Dozens of farmers mobilized by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Chao-rung (
The farmers, who came up to Taipei from Changhua, Chen's constituency, drove a tractor to a CPC Corp, Taiwan service station on the corner of Beiping E Road and Linsen N Road, lifting banners stating their demands.
Fuel subsidies for fishing fleets just went up from 8 percent to 14 percent after lobbying from fishing interests, Chen said.
PHOTO: CHEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
"Farmers should also benefit from subsidies in these tough times," he said.
There are more subsidies in place for the fishing industry than for farmers because fishing is more energy-intensive and the fuel used is more easily tracked, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said.
"When compared to fishermen, farmer's fuel costs are a smaller percentage of their overall operating expenses," said Lin Ming-yen (林民仁), head of the agricultural machinery division at the COA's Agriculture and Food Agency. "Agricultural fuels are also harder to keep track of properly as diesel and gasoline are used in other vehicles."
Instead of subsidies, Lin said that relief might come for farmers in the shape of tax exemptions.
"We are pushing for a cargo tax exemption on fuel used in agriculture,along with the commercial tax exemption already in place for fuel used in agriculture. This will represent a price difference of NT$5 to NT$6 between the market price and the price for farmers," he said.
A greater price differential might encourage the flow of cheap subsidized diesel onto the black market, Chen said, as the fuel used in farm machinery is no different to the fuel used in ordinary vehicles.
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:
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