Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that, if elected, he would establish a "golden triangle" in Taiwan, boosting employment rates by revitalizing the financial, tourism and healthcare industries.
Pushing for financial liberalization, opening up to Chinese tourists and developing medical tourism will raise economic growth to 6 percent, raise average personal income to US$20,000 by 2011 and decrease unemployment to 3 percent, Ma said.
"The Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] should be blamed for the declining economy. The KMT will relax regulations on finance and investment and will not govern the country on ideology alone," Ma said at a Taiwan investment forum sponsored by Citigroup Global Markets at the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel in Taipei.
Ma accused the government of placing unreasonable restrictions on foreign investment and vowed to liberalize the financial system with a goal of creating more than 30,000 jobs over four years and generating NT$1.3 trillion (US$40 billion) in annual GDP.
Opening the country to 10,000 Chinese tourists per day over four years would boost the local tourism industry by generating annual revenues of NT$200 billion and creating 100,000 jobs, Ma said.
Ma described government efforts to promote medical tourism as "too little, too late" and promised to give the healthcare industry a boost if elected.
The government pledged in March to give priority to medical tourism promotion as part of its efforts to expand tourist numbers and beef up the medical service sector.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said it would allow foreigners to visit Taiwan for medical purposes for a maximum stay of six months.
Ma said Taiwan should not ignore the global medical tourism market, which is expected to generate annual profits of NT$2.6 billion by the end of this year and NT$4 billion by 2010.
With a goal of contributing NT$380 billion to annual GDP, the country should start an international publicity campaign highlighting its high-quality medical care and relatively inexpensive costs to attract foreign patients, Ma said.
Ma said he would push for the creation of a "golden triangle" to facilitate transportation by transforming Taiwan into a "bi-regional airline hub" serving the northeast and southeast Asian regions.
The bi-regional hub plan foresees linking Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Tokyo's Haneda Airport, Seoul's Gimpo Airport and Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport in the north, and to Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok Airport, Singapore's Changi Airport and airports in the ASEAN nations in the south, Ma said.
"It would be great news for Taiwan if I and my running mate Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) win the presidential election next year," he said.
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
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
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