Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said on Thursday that she did not think Taiwan had been engaging with China over the past three months at too rapid a pace, although she added that the “tempo” could be faster.
Lai, who is visiting Washington in a bid to publicize Taiwan’s stance on the development of cross-strait relations, explained that finding a “better tempo” means allowing the people to better understand what the government is doing and to what purpose in its efforts in cross-strait relations.
She said many policies that have been criticized by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as “rash” are in fact issues that were discussed by negotiators across the Taiwan Strait during the DPP administration, with consensus actually reached on some of the issues.
These issues include the institutionalization of cross-strait negotiations, allowing Chinese tourists to enter Taiwan, exchanges of charter cargo flights and direct cross-strait shipping links, she said.
Some economic and trade measures, such as lifting the ceiling on Taiwan investment in China, were agreed upon two-and-a-half years ago, she said.
“Those measures were not implemented [under the former DPP government] because of Taiwan’s elections and other political reasons,” she said.
Lai said of her visit to the US capital that visiting in person contributes to increasing friendship and trust — two elements she said were desperately needed in US-Taiwan relations.
Noting that she helped handle many US-related cases she worked in the DPP administration prior to 2004, Lai said she felt sad that US-Taiwan relations had taken a downward during the eight years of DPP rule.
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