The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) polling center yesterday said that more than 60 percent of Taiwanese think there has been a lack of transparency during talks between China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) and Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤), despite President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) call for transparency in cross-strait talks.
More than half of the respondents in the poll said cross-strait agreements on certification and standardization of merchandise would have a negative impact on Taiwan.
Nearly 70 percent supported DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) call to Ma to promise that Taiwan would sign free trade agreements (FTAs) with other countries after signing an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China.
Dividing respondents into supporters of the pan-green and pan-blue camps, results indicated that 81.3 percent of pan-green-camp supporters agreed with Tsai’s call, while 65.9 percent of pan-blue supporters also agreed.
“This shows that no matter what their political stance is, everyone thinks Ma should promise that Taiwan would be able to sign FTAs with other countries after signing an ECFA with China,” the DPP statement said.
Also, 71.1 percent of respondents said China was the biggest obstacle to Taiwan’s attempt to sign FTAs with other countries.
The poll was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday and collected 914 valid samples.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
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