Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday dismissed media speculation that he would meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) during the opening of the World Exposition in Shanghai in May.
Wang told reporters at the legislature that he did not plan to attend the event although he had received an invitation from China.
Wang was responding to a report by the Chinese-language Want Daily yesterday quoting an anonymous source as saying that a Chinese official last month invited Wang to preside over the opening of Taiwan’s hall in the exhibition on May 11.
The story said Wang could meet Hu, as Hu might visit the hall on the day it opens.
Meanwhile, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday assured Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) that the government’s proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with Beijing would not include any “one China” consensus in its articles.
Last week, Wu also dismissed DPP Legislator Pan Men-an’s (潘孟安) concerns that Taiwan and China would sign an ECFA based on the premise of unification.
“We will insist on introducing a mechanism allowing either of the signatories to terminate the agreement,” Wu said in the legislature.
At a separate setting yesterday, legislative watchdog Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) urged the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus to hold a public hearing on the planned ECFA.
During a visit to the KMT caucus, CCW chairman Ku Chung-hua (顧忠華) also called on the legislature to organize a task force to supervise the government’s negotiations on an ECFA.
In response, KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) promised to consider the proposed public hearing, but said such a task force might be redundant as the government had promised to report the progress of the ECFA negotiations to the Legislative Yuan on 10 occasions.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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