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 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