Taiwan's diplomatic efforts will face increased difficulty over the next two years because of China's intensifying efforts to limit the nation's international space, Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (黃志芳) said yesterday on the first working day after the Lunar New Year break.
Speaking to reporters after a welcome-back ceremony for ministry staff, Huang said that China would undoubtedly intensify its efforts to squeeze Taiwan's international space, especially with the approach of the Beijing Olympics in August.
"It will be two very arduous years no matter who is at the helm of the government," he said.
Huang said in the upcoming year Taiwan would continue to nurture its US ties by establishing a smoother communication channel with Washington.
He revealed one of the projects that the ministry is working on is to lobby the US government for visa-waiver privileges for Taiwanese passport holders.
A major personnel reshuffle at ambassadorial level is also scheduled to take place this year, Huang said, noting that many of the older ambassadors who are near retirement would be replaced by younger faces.
The new assignments would be announced by the end of the month, he said.
During his address, Huang thanked staff for their diligence and pledged to raise tuition subsidy for the children of ministry personnel stationed overseas.
The minister said many people have the misconception that those stationed outside of Taiwan are luckier because their salaries are higher.
That was not so, Huang said. He said an example was when the home of an ambassador stationed in South America was robbed and the representative and his wife were tied up during the ordeal.
Huang also announced that two new dormitory buildings would be erected in the next two years to accommodate personnel who are in transition prior to, and after, overseas assignments.
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