Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) said yesterday he was honored to be chosen as the president’s envoy for next month’s APEC leadership summit in Peru.
“This is a great responsibility. I will participate in the meeting and spare no effort,” Lien told reporters in front of his house.
Taiwan’s presidents have been barred from the annual APEC summits because of pressure from Beijing.
On Wednesday, the Presidential Office said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) tapped Lien for the Lima meeting, and that Lien was the most suitable candidate given his understanding of the international situation and an impressive educational background.
Lien will attend the event in his capacity as chairman of the National Policy Foundation, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) think tank. As a former vice president, Lien will be the highest-ranking Taiwanese official ever to attend an APEC summit.
In a statement issued late on Wednesday, Lien said he would share his views and experiences with APEC leaders.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday the choice of Lien signified the lessening of tension across the Taiwan Strait.
Ministry spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said China’s approval of Lien as envoy shows Beijing is acquiescing to Taiwan’s offer of a “diplomatic truce” and the issue of Taiwan’s international space was slowly being resolved.
Noting that APEC is one of the most important international organizations that Taiwan has joined as a full member, Chen said Lien’s attendance would be a positive development in cross-strait relations.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JENNY W. HSU AND CNA
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