The government has grossly overestimated the benefits of its previous agreements with China and inking an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with Beijing as proposed by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would be a “disaster,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday.
“The government has failed miserably to deliver on its promises on the benefits of opening Taiwan's borders to China. Therefore, how can we trust this administration when it says an ECFA will be good for Taiwan?” she said.
Tsai was referring to the four agreements signed between Taiwan and China last November when Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) met China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) in Taiwan.
The four agreements included the opening of the “three links” — direct air, sea transport and postal services — plus an agreement on food safety.
Tsai said under the agreements, the government promised to seek compensation from Beijing on behalf of 12 Taiwanese firms for the damage caused by imports of melamine-tainted milk products from China last year.
“But so far we haven't heard a word on it,” she said, adding that the Ma administration had destroyed public confidence in the nation’s leadership.
She added that if the government could miss the target so badly on the benefits of the “three links,” all the promises of potential positive economic and social impacts of an ECFA “are all figments of the government's imagination.”
According to a recent report by the DPP, Ma's direct flight policy had failed to turn Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport into a “major Asian transport hub” as promised as its regional ranking in passenger flights fell from 14th to 18th.
Kaohsiung International Airport also dropped to 54th place from 45th last year.
Cargo flights have also been far below the anticipated numbers, the DPP said, adding that direct cargo flights to Guangzhou were scrapped after less than a month because of low demand.
The number of Chinese tourists was also disappointingly low at an average of 1,300 people, compared with the government's promise of 3,000 per day, the DPP said.
Also See: MOTC under fire over lackluster seaport performance
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater