Executive Yuan Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said yesterday that the Cabinet was not aware of ny reshuffle after a newspaper report said the president was in favor of a small-scale reshuffle.
A report in yesterday’s Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) said Ou Chin-der (歐晉德), the executive director of Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC), and Minister Without Portfolio Tsai Hsun-hsiung (蔡勳雄) were possible candidates to replace Hsueh Hsiang-chuan (薛香川), secretary-general of the Executive Yuan.
Jennifer Wang (王如玄), the chairwoman of the Council of Labor Affairs, and Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) were also to be replaced, it said.
Asked about the report, Su declined to comment, except to say: “The Executive Yuan is not aware of any plans for change.”
Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) also refused to comment when approached during an inspection trip to a traffic control center.
Ou dismissed the report that said he would replace Hsueh as a “rumor” and said the most important thing for him was to focus on his job at THSRC, as the high-speed railway is vital to Taiwan.
“It is purely speculation,” Ou said. “I thank people for their love and support, but I just want to do my job well at this stage of my life.”
THSRC spokesperson Ted Chia (賈先德) also denied that Ou would be leaving the company.
“I believe he [Ou] made it very clear before that there are many things that you can do for your country. The high-speed rail is a very important national infrastructure. At present he has no plans to work anywhere else,” Chia said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) called on the government to replace Wang, saying that she “was not an expert at resolving unemployment.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHELLEY SHAN
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