■FISHING
No approval required
The fishing industry agreement Taiwan and China seek to sign next month does not need to be reviewed by the legislature because it does not involve legal revision of the cross-strait statute, Mainland Affairs Council Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said yesterday. Because President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has pledged not to further open the local market to Chinese workers, Lai said the agreement did not have anything to do with allowing more Chinese workers to enter Taiwan. Chinese fishermen have been allowed to work on deep-sea fishing boats since 1993 and to stay at temporary shelters on land since 2004. There are now about 10,000 Chinese fishermen working on deep-sea fishing boats and between 4,500 and 5,000 on inshore fishing boats. The number of fishermen from other foreign countries is about 4,700. While the next round of cross-strait high-level talks are set to take place in Taichung City next month, the two sides will address four issues: fishing industry cooperation, quality checks of agricultural products, cross-strait cooperation in inspection and certification and avoiding double taxation.
■EDUCATION
Hakka exam to pay off
In an effort to promote the Hakka language, the Council for Hakka Affairs (CHA) said that the government would offer grants for junior high school and elementary students who pass a Hakka examination. The results of this year’s exam, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, will be announced on Jan. 15 and those who pass the exam will be eligible for the grants, Minister of Hakka Affairs Huang Yu-cheng (黃玉振) said. Only elementary and junior high school students are eligible for the awards, Huang said. Anyone passing the elementary level test will receive NT$1,000, while NT$5,000 and NT$10,000 will be given to those who pass the intermediate and upper-intermediate level tests respectively.
■DIPLOMACY
New trade offices planned
Taiwan plans to set up trade offices in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, which may signal a breakthrough in the country’s bid to participate in ASEAN, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Justin Chou (周守訓) said yesterday. At least one of the offices will be established by the end of the year, said Chou, who serves as a convener of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign and National Defense Committee. Chou said the country had difficulty setting up trade offices in these three countries in the past because of China’s obstruction. However, he said that because cross-strait relations have improved significantly over the past year, ASEAN members are now more willing to develop economic and trade relations. This shows that it is not impossible for the country to be included in ASEAN in the future, he said.
■AGRICULTURE
COA to buy oranges
The Council of Agriculture (COA) will purchase oranges from farmers for domestic use and expand exports to China as part of efforts to stabilize prices in anticipation of an oversupply in the December and January harvest season, officials said yesterday. Orange production is estimated to total 210,000 tonnes this year, said Hsu Han-ching (許漢卿), chief secretary of the COA’s Agriculture and Food Agency. The council will purchase 20,000 tonnes of the fruit, half of which will be used to make juice for schoolchildren, while the other half will be put into cold storage, he said. Meanwhile, the country will export 1,870 tonnes of oranges to China by the end of the year, up from 1,250 tonnes last year.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
NUMBERS IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
Temperatures are forecast to drop steadily as a continental cold air mass moves across Taiwan, with some areas also likely to see heavy rainfall, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. From today through early tomorrow, a cold air mass would keep temperatures low across central and northern Taiwan, and the eastern half of Taiwan proper, with isolated brief showers forecast along Keelung’s north coast, Taipei and New Taipei City’s mountainous areas and eastern Taiwan, it said. Lows of 11°C to 15°C are forecast in central and northern Taiwan, Yilan County, and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, and 14°C to 17°C
STEERING FAILURE: The first boat of its class is experiencing teething issues as it readies for acceptance by the navy, according to a recent story about rudder failure The Hai Kun (海鯤), the nation’s first locally built submarine, allegedly suffered a total failure of stern hydraulic systems during the second round of sea acceptance trials on June 26, and sailors were forced to manually operate the X-rudder to turn the submarine and return to port, news Web site Mirror Daily reported yesterday. The report said that tugboats following the Hai Kun assisted the submarine in avoiding collisions with other ships due to the X-rudder malfunctioning. At the time of the report, the submarine had completed its trials and was scheduled to begin diving and surfacing tests in shallow areas. The X-rudder,
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