President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was urged yesterday not to forget “the nature and true color of the Chinese Communists” and to uphold the sovereignty of the Republic of China.
Accusing Taiwanese police of “using force against their countrymen and women,” Taipei City Councilor Lee Wen-ying (李文英) of the Democratic Progressive Party said: “Human rights in Taiwan have been lost as a result of the force used by police against anti-China protesters” at venues visited by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) in the past two days.
Lee went to the Presidential Office to present several books and an appeal to Ma, calling on him not to sacrifice the nation’s sovereignty.
Explaining her actions, Lee said that Mao Zedong’s Quotations and the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) published by the Epoch Times — represent the most telling record of the Chinese Communists’ “vicious and unscrupulous nature.”
Another book she presented, former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) The Taiwanese in a New Era, argues that Taiwanese should “outperform the era” and that the country’s president should represent the people of Taiwan rather than himself, she said.
Records of China’s Judicial Persecution of Taiwanese Businessmen, meanwhile, is an account of Taiwanese businesspeople in China who were “rejected” by Chen and his aides after they were exploited and bullied, she said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods