The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) is set to proceed with a demonstration tomorrow to protest against the government’s pro-China economic policies.
TSU Secretary-General Lin Jhi-jia (林志嘉) said the demonstration would be a protest against the administration’s China-friendly economic policy, which he called a “mistake.”
“The policy, which is irresponsible in nature, has caused the economy to bleed and seriously hurt the country,” he said.
As the party has suspended the party rights of Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛), a TSU member, for her endorsement of the administration’s liberal economic policy toward China, Lin said his party would wait until the demonstration was over to “carefully consider” possibly early next month how to deal with Lai.
There have been calls for Lai’s resignation from the post or expulsion from the party.
POLL
Citing a survey conducted by its opinion center, Lin said that most people considered the administration’s cross-strait economic policy was flawed and that his party was duty-bound to reflect public opinion.
The survey, which questioned 1,029 adults around the country between Aug. 12 and Aug. 15, showed that more than 72 percent of respondents believed the recent relaxation of cross-strait regulations would benefit big businesses more than the general public.
The policies included loosening the regulation restricting a listed company’s investment in China to a maximum of 40 percent of its net worth and banning Taiwanese companies from setting up 12-inch wafer fabs in China.
The poll also found that nearly 38 percent of the people polled said the administration had eased cross-strait policy too hastily, while only 12 percent said it should pick up the pace.
More than 41 percent said the deregulatory measures had not helped the stock market, but nearly 31 percent said they did.
More than 46 percent of those polled said the economy had worsened since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in May, while about 11 percent said it had improved.
Nearly 35 percent of respondents said their quality of life had deteriorated since May. Only 6 percent said it had improved.
However, not all the respondents were unhappy with the administration’s cross-strait policy.
Nearly 48 percent said the relaxation of cross-strait measures had helped the economy, while 35 percent said it had had little effect or none at all.
MIXED VIEWS
Fifty-six percent said the measures helped improve cross-strait relations, but about 31 percent said they did not.
In addition, 45 percent said they were generally satisfied with the new measures. About 37 percent said they were unhappy with them.
Regarding Ma’s performance over the past three months, nearly 43 percent found it satisfactory, while about 42 percent said they were not satisfied.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: