Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世) yesterday defended the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) for having financial institutions promote the government’s planned economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China.
At a press conference, Lin said promotion was not mandatory, adding that the FSC only sent a document suggesting that financial institutions help promote the ECFA with China.
“Securities firms enjoy the right to decide for themselves,” Lin said yesterday, after the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) yesterday quoted anonymous securities businesses as complaining that the government had been forcing financial institutions to help promote the trade pact.
The report said the FSC resolved during a meeting on March 2 to require all local financial industry associations to hold sessions to promote and explain the ECFA. The associations, in turn would issue documents to state-owned and private banks and other financial institutions, urging them to cooperate while members should report their promotional achievements back to the associations, which would then report to the FSC, the story said.
The report cited a document issued by the Taiwan Securities Association (TSA) to its members as saying that financial associations had printed reminders, handouts and marketing material for promoting the ECFA, which would be delivered to association members on April 9.
The report said the TSA required that its members choose managers who could serve as lecturers to promote the ECFA while employees at securities firms should carry ECFA material with them so that they could explain the nature of the pact to their family and customers.
The report also quoted an unidentified FSC official as saying that the FSC only asked financial associations to pass the government’s ECFA material to their members, adding that the it could not force businesses to do anything they were reluctant to do.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pan Meng-an (潘孟安) urged the Control Yuan to censure the KMT administration for abusing government authority to promote the ECFA, adding that signing an ECFA is not yet a national policy because the contents of the proposed agreement has not cleared the legislative floor.
Lin shrugged off the criticism.
“This is ridiculous. I don’t know what nonsense the DPP is talking about,” Lin said, adding that signing an ECFA is a national policy proposed by the Executive Yuan.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift