The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it did not know what was delaying three planned financial memorandums of understanding (MOU) with China, but rejected the possibility that Beijing would use it as a bargaining chip to demand something in return.
MAC Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said he did not think Beijing would use the three MOUs as bargaining chips because they are normal for many countries, although it is the first time that Taipei and Beijing have decided to sign such a document.
“I have not heard of any external factors [to delay the MOUs],” Liu said.
“Because the MOUs are simple in nature, it would be strange to use them as an apparatus to demand something else,” he said.
Liu said he did not know exactly what had stalled the process of signing the three financial MOUs, but that the council hoped they would be signed soon.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said it expected to sign the three MOUs in July. Liu said he was “quite surprised” when he heard that the FSC had made such an announcement.
Liu said that while the FSC did not report to his council on a daily basis, MAC officials were regularly informed of the MOUs’ progress.
The last time his council had heard from the FSC was at the end of last month when the commission said “things were pretty much ready,” Liu said.
Both sides signed an agreement in June this year on financial cooperation, which will be followed by signing three financial MOUs on banking, insurance and securities and futures.
Liu said that because financial MOUs were highly professional and technical in nature, they did not concern politics. If Beijing had wanted to politicize the issue, it would have done so when the agreement was signed in June, he said.
The next round of cross-strait high-level talks will be held in Taichung in mid or late December.
Liu said a security task force had been established to ensure the safety of Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
Activists staged protests against Chen’s visit at the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel when he attended the second Chiang-Chen meeting in Taipei in November last year. He was there to attend a dinner hosted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Because Chiang did not meet Chinese Communist Party Chairman Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) during the third Chiang-Chen meeting in Nanjing in June, Liu said he did not expect Chen to meet President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who doubles as KMT chairman.
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
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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