Negotiators from China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) left Taiwan yesterday amid tight security.
ARATS Deputy Chairman Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中) and members of the delegation met former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) before leaving for the airport.
A minor altercation took place when staff at the Grand Hyatt Taipei locked the hotel’s front entrance from the outside to block members of the media from approaching representatives of the Chinese delegation who were boarding a tour bus for the airport.
Escorted by police, the delegation took a short bus tour of downtown Taipei before heading for Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
Zheng declined to answer questions by reporters as he proceeded to the boarding gate. Despite the absence of demonstrators, the envoy was surrounded by heavy security.
Zheng and the delegation arrived at Taipei on Friday for preparatory talks ahead of the third round of cross-strait negotiation between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and ARATS, which is scheduled to be held in Nanjing from Friday through April 29.
Following negotiations, SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his counterpart, ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), are expected to sign three agreements on financial cooperation, changing direct cross-strait charter flights into regular flights and joint efforts to combat crime, as well as a joint statement on opening Taiwan to investment from China, SEF Secretary-General Kao Koong-lian (高孔廉) said on Saturday.
However, Kao said the SEF and ARATS would not sign three memorandums of understanding on banking, securities and futures, and insurance that Taiwan had wanted to sign because of the complexity of the items.
Meanwhile, Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) was scheduled to report the details of the preparatory talks to Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) during a closed-door meeting today and to the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee on Wednesday.Negotiators from China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) left Taiwan yesterday amid tight security.
ARATS Deputy Chairman Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中) and members of the delegation met former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) before leaving for the airport.
A minor altercation took place when staff at the Grand Hyatt Taipei locked the hotel’s front entrance from the outside to block members of the media from approaching representatives of the Chinese delegation who were boarding a tour bus for the airport.
Escorted by police, the delegation took a short bus tour of downtown Taipei before heading for Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
Zheng declined to answer questions by reporters as he proceeded to the boarding gate. Despite the absence of demonstrators, the envoy was surrounded by heavy security.
Zheng and the delegation arrived at Taipei on Friday for preparatory talks ahead of the third round of cross-strait negotiation between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and ARATS, which is scheduled to be held in Nanjing from Friday through April 29.
Following negotiations, SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his counterpart, ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), are expected to sign three agreements on financial cooperation, changing direct cross-strait charter flights into regular flights and joint efforts to combat crime, as well as a joint statement on opening Taiwan to investment from China, SEF Secretary-General Kao Koong-lian (高孔廉) said on Saturday.
However, Kao said the SEF and ARATS would not sign three memorandums of understanding on banking, securities and futures, and insurance that Taiwan had wanted to sign because of the complexity of the items.
Meanwhile, Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) was scheduled to report the details of the preparatory talks to Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) during a closed-door meeting today and to the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee on Wednesday.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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
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The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift